The Senate and the Council of Governors have called for the establishment of a Devolution Bond that would enable the National Treasury to meet its obligation to provide timely and adequate funding to counties.
The two government organs said the move would see the government release its fair share of national cake to the devolved units on time and facilitate continuous delivery of services to Kenyans across the country.
The national government has been at loggerheads with county governments over delays in disbursement of funds to counties, even as most of the devolved units continued to fail to meet their own tax collection targets, hampering service delivery.
The impasse between the two levels of government over the timely release of funds has seen the county governors threaten to shut down operations in their counties.
According to budget estimates presented in the National Assembly by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Prof. Njuguna Ndungu on Thursday this week, county governments are set to receive Sh385.4 billion to support local development initiatives.
The CS said the allocation is the agreed share from the total budgeted estimates of Sh3.68 trillion, where the lion’s share will go towards settling the country’s huge public debts, which currently stand at Sh1.6 trillion.
In a communiqué between the Senate and the Council of Governors [CoG], which was read by the Senate Speaker Amason Kingi in Naivasha, the two entities said they would engage the National Treasury to introduce the devolution bond to enable it to meet funding requests as they fall due.
Kingi said that the two bodies would initiate legislation which would see the Ministry of Treasury separated from the Finance docket to facilitate the new move.
Kingi said the two levels of government would also expedite the unbundling and costing of devolved functions to enable the counties to receive the necessary resources to execute their functions, which is being overseen by the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee.
He committed that the Senate would help fast-track the development of laws that would support benefit sharing with counties on revenue generated from natural resources and government parastatal institutions.
Kingi said the Senate would also work towards the passage of additional conditional grant allocation bills to facilitate the flow of conditional grants to counties.
Kingi, who chaired the inaugural high-level meeting to review the ten years of progress in the implementation of devolution, said they would develop laws and policies to align and support devolution, oversight of devolved units, and other emerging issues of pending bills.
“Parliament will help to fast-track legislation to align the regional development authorities with the devolved system of government and remove duplication and overlaps in mandates with the county governments,” said Kingi.
He said that the Senate and the Council of Governors high-level meeting would henceforth be convened annually to review and address emerging issues of concern to counties.
The Senate Speaker also committed to the enactment of legislation to provide for pensions for retiring governors.
By Erastus Gichohi
