Covid-19 Containment Measures and their Effect on Socio-Economic Wellbeing of Uasin Gishu County Government Staff, Kenya

Abstract

COVID-19 was a major health emergency worldwide; countries were forced to adopt quarantine measures and other restrictions because of the highly infectiousness nature of COVID-19. It is in this context that the study sought to investigate the Effect of the containment measures on socio-economic wellbeing of Uasin Gishu County Government Staff, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were: to determine the influence of implementation of COVID-19 behavioural protocols on socio-economic wellbeing of staff of Uasin Gishu County Government; to assess the impact of implementation of COVID-19 fiscal measures on socioeconomic wellbeing of employees of Uasin Gishu County Government; and to determine the influence of implementation of COVID-19 macro-financial measures on socioeconomic wellbeing of employees of Uasin Gishu County; The study adopted explanatory mixed method research design. The target population comprised 6,400 employees in Uasin Gishu County. The study employed stratified sampling and simple random sampling techniques to select the respondents. The sample size consisted of 10 heads of departments and 198 employees of Uasin Gishu county government. The data collection tools were questionnaire and interview guide. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics including mean, percentages and frequencies; chi-square was used to test the hypotheses. Inferential statistics was also used. Analysis by the implementation of COVID-19 behavioural protocols as a containment measure shows that the P-value = .000 was less than the Alpha level 0.05. Therefore, there was statistical significance relationship between behavioral COVID-19 containment measures and socio-economic wellbeing of employees of Uasin Gishu County Government. Behavioural measures such as lock down highly disrupted businesses’ sourcing and distribution functions, which in turn affected the socio-economic wellbeing of the local population. The study recommended that financial organizations should offer trainings to the masses to embrace saving and empower them to participate in multiple economic activities; this would ensure that in any of any occurrences such as COVID 19, the businesses would have the resilience to cope.

Key words: COVID-19; Containment measures; Socio-economic Wellbeing