Excerpt : Governors are justified to demand for more money to go to counties but national government wants to retain more resources in Nairobi. There is corruption but it is not on the scale of the what is happening at the national level.
Governors are justified to demand for more money to go to counties but national government wants to retain more resources in Nairobi. There is corruption but it is not on the scale of the what is happening at the national level.
Governors are justified to demand more money.
When functions were devolved, most of the functions that were being handled by the national government have all been taken over by counties.
Hospitals, health centres and dispensaries are all under county governments so is agriculture and water.
People in the counties are looking up to governors to carry out all these functions.
The problem is that we devolved many functions, but we have a national government that is not willing to let resources to follow the devolved functions.
They want to retain more resources in Nairobi. Counties require these monies not only to run those ministries but to carry out development work.
So asking for Sh327 billion out of a three trillion budget, which is just about 10 per cent, in my opinion, the governors are justified to press the national government to release these monies.
From what is happening now and the confrontation between the governors and the national government that we have seen in the previous years, it is a clear indication that this regime does not mean well for devolution.
The people who run this country have little commitment to devolution.
They want that old system where they could patronise counties, where they would go and dish out money as they wanted, build a road and a hospital as they wished.
That is an old system which went with the old Constitution. They do not want to be guided by the 2010 Constitutional that stripped the executive of discretion.
It is the responsibility of Parliament and the counties that should determine the budget.
I can say without fear of contradiction that there is no goodwill on the side of the Jubilee administration. That is the reason we have these problems.
Otherwise, in a budget of Sh3.02 trillion, you cannot let counties collapse just because of an additional Sh10 billion.
The Constitution created the Commission on Revenue Allocation whose recommendations, the Executive and the National Assembly are bound by. But they do not listen to CRA. They submit their recommendations, but no one wants to go by their proposals.
If you go to other jurisdictions with a system like ours, for instance, India, their recommendation is biding.
Corruption is massive in the counties, but my argument is this: the amount that is allocated the 47 county governments, even if you assume all of it is stolen, cannot be half the amount that goes to waste in the national government.
There is corruption, but it is not on the scale of what is happening at the national level.
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