Residents of Makueni County have proposed that the National Youth Service (NYS) be decentralized to counties in an effort to ensure the institution is fully utilized and offer vital services at the grassroots level.
Also, they suggested that NYS can be engaged to do extensive farming in Gulana Kulalu besides constructing dams and roads especially at county level in order to reduce huge amounts of money being spent by national and county governments to pay contractors.
“There is need to restructure NYS to meet the needs of the people in counties. They can be utilized by both levels of government in farming to increase food production. Also the heavy equipment they have can be used to improve the road network at county level at a subsidized fee,” said Boniface Mutinga, Director Youth at the Makueni County Government.
He made the remarks on Wednesday at Wote Technical Training Institute (TTI) where the Police and Prisons Taskforce led by team leader Simiyu Werunga had visited to collect views of the residents on the restructuring of NYS.
During the public participation event, it was also proposed that NYS should be decentralized when recruiting, need for the organization to be more transparent, the current allowance be increased to 10,000 from 1,500 and the recruits be under a medical cover.
Among those who gave their views included wananchi drawn from the sub counties, police and national administration and other government officials from both levels of government.
The taskforce will be in Kitui today (Thursday) and in Machakos tomorrow (Friday) for a similar exercise.
By Patrick Nyakundi
