After the lapse of Kenya devolution support programme 2020, the Ministry of Devolution with support from World Bank are designing a new governance service delivery programme that will support both county executive and county assemblies. Consequently, the team from devolution and house committee chairpersons of Garissa County assembly today held a one-day design workshop for the upcoming 5 year programme aimed at enhancing devolution and ensure public funds are used to spur development. Opening the workshop in Garissa town Garissa County assembly Speaker Abdi Gure hailed the role played by development partners in ensuring improved performance through legislative framework. Gure said the county assembly was facing myriads of challenges ranging from capacity building for both MCAs and the secretariat for effective performance. As a result, Gure said it was prudent for development partners to focus on empowering the county assemblies. The speaker noted that for the assemblies to execute its three core functions of oversight, legislation and representation, there was an urgent need for the development partners to chip in and support this 2nd arm of the government. The speaker told the team from devolution ministry, representative from Public Finance Management (PFM) and intergovernmental relations that Garissa County Assembly was facing serious problems following a 2021 inferno that gutted down the Assembly’s entire infrastructural facilities to ground. He said the inferno completely destroyed property worth Sh119 million including the chambers and entire offices for both house committee leadership and the secretariat. The speaker said that the assembly was committed to discharging its mandate despite the constraints and lauded the new engagement with the development partners to ensure wananchi realized the fruits of devolution. On his part, the deputy speaker Musdaf Abdirashid lamented that county assemblies will not be effective in discharging their constitutional core mandate unless proper legislation delinking the assemblies from the executive arm of the county governments is enacted. He called on the devolution ministry to support the call seeking autonomy of county assemblies. Abdirashid said that the county assemblies were under the mercy of the governor and therefore it was impossible for them to oversight the executive arm of the county governments. The deputy speaker further stated that unless the assemblies were delinked from the executive, billions of monies earmarked to improve lives and livelihoods ‘would go to waste’. The team was led by Dr Lawrence Nyagah of ministry of devolution who was accompanied by Sandra Muyoka in charge of monitoring and evaluation of PFM reform secretariat and Mumbi Kariuki of intergovernmental relations technical committee among others.
Source: Kenya News Agency