The drought situation in Kajiado continues to worsen with 380,000 households now facing starvation up from 110,000 households in the last three months.
According to the Kajiado County Joint Drought Risk Coordination Committee chaired by Governor Joseph ole Lenku and co-chaired by the County Commissioner Felix Watikila, the drought situation is moving from bad to worse and is getting out of hand.
“We ask the national government to fast track food relief assistance to the County,” said Ole Lenku, noting that the government also needs to embrace the component of cash transfer in mitigating the drought as cash transfers are faster, efficient and less prone to corruption.
“Following various other consultations, we have agreed that beginning February we would want to see a bigger chunk of the food relief moving towards cash transfers,” said Governor Lenku.
The Governor revealed that they have operationalized the national drought emergency forum that has a fund that will determine emergency projects and also has an element of cash transfer.
“By operationalizing the committee, we hope that projects that go towards building resilience and capacity building for communities to mitigate drought are going to be financed,” said Lenku.
While the committee is thankful for the efforts of the many partners who have been offering relief support, they are urging the partners to centralize the support at the Governor’s and County Commissioner’s offices so that the committee can determine where the food support goes to.
“We are seeing a lot of relief food going to people who are nearer the highways and yet we have many communities who are far flung and sometimes inaccessible and only the government can access them,” said Lenku.
“Thus to avoid a situation of skewed food distribution, we urge all food relief support to go to the committee which will then use the national and county government machinery to reach every vulnerable household in the county,” added Lenku.
The committee has organized a meeting on Monday next week that will bring all Non-Governmental Organizations in Kajiado together so that they can work in synergy.
By Diana Meneto
