Governors criticise attempts to derail counties mandate

Governors Wednesday deplored various attempts to derail devolution terming the moves subversive.

The county captains also used the third national devolution conference to celebrate their governments’ achievements and urged Kenyans to protect the system at “all costs”.

The Judiciary received much accolades for protecting devolution as Council of Governors (CoG) chairman Peter Munya tore into individuals undermining the transfer of resources to the grassroots. Asserting that both counties and the national government were sovereign Mr Munya said “Any deliberate undermining of devolution is treasonable and subversive”.

“It is like undermining the existence of our republic. The Constitution entrenched devolution,” Mr Munya said amid cheers from thousands of delegates at Meru National Polytechnic.

He took issue with continued passing of laws that whittle down devolution, including the Water Bill that he said aims at taking away counties functions. Some authorities were also being formed to eat into counties roles, he said.

“Some national agencies that were supposed to hand over functions to counties are being reinvented in the name of authorities like National Water Conservation and Storage,” he said.

He vouched for equitable share of national resources adding that at least 45 per cent of revenue should go to counties, a thing that should be entrenched in the Constitution.

Mr Munya demanded that the National Treasury allocates money for 40,000 kilometres of roads that were placed under counties as well as funds for libraries and museums.

He also rued about slow disbursement of cash to counties adding if the Integrated Financial Management Information System had failed, it should be reviewed.

The Meru governor also expressed regret that most of the counties had only received their allocations up to January leaving them in the red and denying residents timely services.

Mr Munya said conditional grants from donors should also be channelled directly to counties instead of passing through ministries, which he said, was unconstitutional.

“It is a mistake to classify donor money as conditional grants. A lot of donor money is stuck at national level frustrating donors,” he said.

He said there’s a breach in division of revenue Bill with some functions run by counties like youth polytechnics being denied funds. He said the Bill on pension should also cater for county workers to avoid discrimination.

Mr Munya added that the Constituency Development Fund should be deducted from the national government kitty just like the Women and Youth Fund.

He rubbished as myth assertions that counties receive money from national government saying the “money is collected nationally from everybody”.

“We don’t receive money from national government, only national grants. We are all tax payers. They should not say we should be grateful for receiving the money as if we exist because of them. The institutions that share the money are created by law,” he said.

He denied that CoG runs an illegal fund with counties contributing to it saying the body is statutory and relies on donors.

He dismissed the Punguza Mzigo referendum initiative that seeks to reduce the number of counties.

Mr Munya said the 47 counties were “not too many” adding that “we should learn from countries like Namibia and Slovakia with smaller population than Kenya’s 40 million.”

Being only three years old, Mr Munya said devolution needs to be nurtured and empowered for growth.

He said it is responsibility of both national and county governments to fight graft without witch-hunt.