Uhuru to kick off Central tour with meeting with governors at Sagana State Lodge

President Uhuru Kenyatta kicks off his tour of the central region on Wednesday by holding a meeting with governors in Nyeri.

The Summit, which brings together the Presidency and governors, will meet at Sagana State Lodge.

The delay in transfer of county functions tops the agenda of Wednesday’s intergovernmental summit.

Transfer and classification of roads will also be among major issues during the meeting according to Council of Governors Chairman Peter Munya.

The roads issue has been a hot potato with counties insisting the national government has no right to issue guidelines that reduce the control of roads from counties.

The fifth national and county government coordinating summit will be chaired by the President while Mr Munya will be the vice chairman.

Mr Munya Sunday said he had noted with concern the slow pace of completing transfers of functions assigned to the devolved units, with the timeline elapsing in March 2016.

He was addressing faithful at Jesus Reigns Chapel (JRC) in Maua Town during a fundraiser.

RELEASE RESOURCES

“We will not entertain a situation where functions are gazetted but money is left at the national government. You cannot devolve functions with no resources to run them,” he said.

On the roads issue, the Meru governor said county governments should be left in charge of roads connecting rural areas while the national government should work on those that transverse the nation as enshrined in the Constitution.

“Roads connecting rural areas cannot be termed as national trunk roads,” he added.

On the table too, Mr Munya said, will be the issue of insufficient funds allocated to county governments to manage the water sector.

“We have been demanding for this money in order to serve our people but the national government has been delaying the release,” he said.

At the same time, he noted that they support proposals by the Commission for Revenue Allocation (CRA) on how the devolved units should share money.

CRA is reviewing the parameters used in allocating funds to counties and has proposed new ones.

These include a new category where a county gets funds based on the number of workers it inherited and which will be at two per cent, and development category, which will be one per cent of the allocation.

The current system used by the CRA bases its criteria on population which takes up 45 per cent share, poverty (18), land area (8), personnel emoluments (20) as well as development at one per cent.

PASS-OUT PARADE

During his tour of the region, President Kenyatta is expected to preside over the pass-out parade of recruits at the Kiganjo Police Training College on Friday.

His tour is coming on the background of the resurgence of illicit alcohol sale and growing rebellion from coffee and tea farmers over low prices.

Farmers in Kirinyaga, Murang’a and Nyeri have threatened to boycott coffee harvesting and others uprooted the crop over low prices.

Coffee factories have also been hit by a spate of thefts that police are blaming on managers.

MPs are demanding for the Sh1.1 billion fertiliser cash they say the National Treasury budgeted for coffee and tea farmers but has not been disbursed to growers.

Parliament through the Committee on Agriculture had set a side Sh600 and Sh500 million for subsidised fertilizer for both tea and coffee respectively.

The funds were to help farmers receive fertiliser at a cheaper price.