Kisumu Governor H.E Prof. Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o today hosted a delegation from the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) who are on a fact-finding mission to assess the impact of devolution in the 47 devolved units over the last ten years.
Led by Commissioner Jonas Kuko, the mission is in the county to analyse service delivery across six sectors including; health, agriculture, roads, water, education and urban services. The assessment focussed on inputs covering human resources and capital, outputs and outcomes on which they had open discussions and presentations by the County Executives Cabinet Members in charge of those dockets.
As part of its duty, the Commission is mandated by the Constitution to make recommendations concerning the basis for equitable sharing of revenue among the 47 County Governments and is currently in the process of developing the fourth basis, thus the need for impact assessment.
In his remarks to the delegation, the Governor noted that there are certain aspects of devolution not yet fully implemented as envisioned and are impeding service delivery at the county. He expressed that constitutionally counties do not get what they should and as a result are left grappling with pending bills.
Nyong’o also noted that disparities in resource allocations are affecting key departments such as health which are then not able to deliver services to the citizenry as anticipated. He says the shortfall in the national budget should be shared equally between the national government and the counties, and not what is currently happening where counties are left with the burden.
His sentiments were acknowledged by Commissioner Isabel Waiyaki who appreciated the need to have in place a nationally accepted revenue collection system for all counties as a way of improving revenue collection. Waiyaki noted that the commission has proposed an Integrated County Revenue Management System whose approval is at the till end and would be a saviour for many counties in terms of revenue collection.
The team also toured various projects undertaken by the County across board and was impressed with the quality of work especially the Akado Vocational Training Centre which they described as a model centre to be replicated in other counties. Akado VTC like Rotary Innovation and Incubation Centre among others has a Child Care centre to take care of children by young mothers who are then able to attend class and breastfeed their children during breaks. The Commission acknowledged that this is the first county they have interacted with this innovative Initiative since they started going round the counties.