Kajiado Governor, Joseph ole Lenku has convened a crisis meeting with all Kajiado county leaders, National government leaders, National Drought Management Authority and several other stakeholders to find ways of mitigating the severe drought that is currently ravaging the county.
According to Governor Lenku, the drought situation in Kajiado has reached unprecedented levels surpassing the severe drought ever witnessed in the county in the year 2009.
“We have had a conversation to find short term, medium term and long term measures to address the drought situation. All surveys indicate that the drought is at the alarm level and hence the need to find immediate solutions to save people’s lives, livestock and also wildlife as part of our environment,” said Lenku
Among a raft of measures put together by the team include distribution of relief food to affected communities, cash transfer to vulnerable families, food for school going children and nutritional foods for young children and breastfeeding mothers urgently.
On the livestock front, Lenku says that the animals need feed pellets and vaccination as they have been moving across the county, other counties and into the neighboring Tanzania attracting a number of livestock diseases hence the need for vaccination.
Other than just playing the coordination role, the county has also set aside Sh130 million from the emergency kitty which will be availed immediately to save the situation.
Ole Lenku revealed that according to various surveys conducted by the several agencies, the emergency situation in Kajiado calls for more than Kshs5Billion in terms of food, livestock pellets, medical drugs and livestock vaccination.
“I want to appeal to humanitarian agencies and people of good will to come forward and support this emergency situation in whatever way they can,” said Governor Lenku
“As a county government together with the national government and other stakeholders, I want to assure Kajiado residents that we will go out of the way to ensure than no life is lost and to try as much as possible to mitigate the loss of livestock though from current survey already done, substantial number of livestock has already been lost amounting to Kshs3 Billion loss.” remarked Lenku
Lenku added that in addition to addressing immediate short term gaps, a long term solution to the drought in the county will be found to avoid a similar situation in the future.
He revealed that there will be a special team sitting to find the long term solution to drought since out of climate change, the drought phenomenon will be a regular happening.
“We commit as the leaders to ensure that we have long term solutions that our community will no longer be dependent on rain fed agriculture. There are other mechanisms to continue with our ranching businesses. We want to create a situation where on one side we have animal fodder production and on the other side practice livestock keeping for business,” said Lenku.
By Diana Meneto
