Unearthing the bounty in the counties: A talk with Peter Munya

The transition to a devolved system of government ends in a month. Some aspects of the transition have been smooth.

Yet, counties are faced with serious problems related to cash flow from the National Treasury and a battle for control of billions of shillings for road construction.

Council of Governors Chairman Peter Munya spoke to Sunday Nation’s reporter on the issues that are defining devolution. Below are excerpts

Question: Deputy Governors say they are underemployed and ignored because the Constitution does not prescribe specific roles for them. What’s the view of the governors and what’s the solution to the problem?

The Constitution spells out the roles of a deputy governor. He is the principal assistant to the governor. The constitutional structure treats the office of the deputy governor the way it treats the office of the Deputy President. The Intergovernmental Relations Act says the deputy governor can even be assigned a specific department to run, unlike the office of the DP, regarding which the law does not go into specifics on areas where duties can be assigned.

The deputy governor can be a county executive, and there are many governors who have done that, where their deputies are in charge of water, intergovernmental relations and many other functions.

Like my DG was in charge of water but, after reorganisation, he is now in charge of emergencies and disaster management. I really don’t see the underemployment issue.
It is a question of personal dynamics between the governor and the deputy.

And you cannot legislate on that. The way they work is shaped by the personalities of those two.

There is no way you can hand over the functions of the governor to the deputy.

There has to be the boss. I don’t know whether there is any DG who has no work. But some want to run for the top county seat.

If you want to run against somebody you were a running mate to, you must say you have a problem with him. Any serious friction between the two can affect service delivery.

Your members have raised the problem of cashflow from the National Treasury, especially last year. How bad is the problem and how are counties coping?

This is the worst year. It is worse than last year. We are almost halfway and very little money has been sent to the counties this far.

Disbursements for November, December and January have not yet been released. The only difference is that this time, the Treasury has shared with us that there are constrains.

That is why you have not seen us coming out to protest. Last week, I met the Treasury PS, the CRA (Commission for Revenue Allocation) and others and they confessed they have missed their target for revenue collection by Sh50 billion.

This is what is affecting the remittances to the county governments. But still, they have to fulfil their constitutional duty by ensuring counties are able to meet their day-to-day obligations.

I know some counties will have a hard time this month paying salaries.

And that is a very difficult situation. We understand the difficulties the National Government is experiencing but it has to ensure resources come to the counties on time.

This has also been compounded by the time we wasted when they were insisting on e-procurement, yet there was no supporting infrastructure.

We wasted several months at the beginning of the year doing nothing. Happily, it was resolved that we could improvise with manual procurement, then feed the data into the system.

Access to short-term borrowing has also been affected after the Governor of the Central Bank said banks should not lend to counties.

The law is clear, counties can do short-term borrowing from commercial banks as long as they have approval of the county assemblies.

Only long term borrowing requires approval of the national government. This is one of the issues we intend to address at the next summit meeting.

Devolution of certain roles, especially roads, has elicited some contention. Do you see a resolution soon?

The transition period is ending on March 4. We need a timetable on how the structuring of national institutions that are still carrying out county functions will be done.

We need that road map. In fact, what should have been done before the 4th of March was never done. That is why, when we hear the Senate wants to extend the term of the Transitional Authority (TA), the Council of Governors is not interested.

The delays that have taken place are a result of the TA not doing its job and kow-towing to the agenda of the national government by delaying transfer of functions.

Also, they keep failing to do their work to justify term extension. In any case, when the TA’s term ends, there is a provision for the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee (IRTC) to take over the residue work.

Extending TA’s term is a misuse of public funds. Let’s have the technical people working for TA transferred to the IRTC for purposes of continuity and the utilisation of expertise, and then disband TA.

Why would you have two institutions in place that are underfunded, are unable to do their work, and have conflicting mandates?  

Unless somebody has an agenda to continue derailing devolution! I can smell a rat there. It’s the official position of the CoG that it’s not useful to extend its term.

On the roads issue, we have a court judgment in place saying all roads, class D and below, are county roads.

The national government and TA were ordered to implement that judgment. TA cannot revise a judgment. This attempted reclassification is illegal.

It is like trying to close the stables after the horses have bolted. We will move back to court and cite them for contempt.

Have the problems in the health sector that erupted intermittently last year settled down?

The health sector has improved tremendously with the taking over by county governments. All indicators, including the National Health Demographic Survey of 2015, are positive.

Expenditure on medicine in 2013 was at Sh2 billion, in 2014 it was at Sh4 billion and in 2015 it is hitting Sh5 billion.

These are statistics from the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority. That is an indicator that drugs are available in hospitals.

The problems we have been experiencing have nothing to do with mismanagement of the health sector by county governments.

Some of them were instigated by the national government, which at one time wanted to take over the sector.

That is why the issue of leased medical equipment and all those programmes they were trying to impose on counties, came up. They wanted an excuse to take over but it never succeeded.

They instigated strikes by working with union officials and exploiting the fear of the unknown — where workers thought they were better off with the national structure.

Some of the complaints had nothing to do with county governments. Like promotions, some were done 10 years ago but the national government had refused to implement them.

Accumulated commitments were not being met; why would that be blamed on county governments?

All these are settling down. They were the usual teething problems of transition. But counties have done extremely well in managing health.

The main challenge is inadequate resources because the national government is keeping more than 50 per cent of the health budget.

Counties have dome miracles to survive on meagre allocations. In this year’s budget, the Ministry of Health was allocated Sh50 billion. What the counties are sharing is Sh45 billion, yet we manage 90 per cent of the health sector. Who is fooling who?

How is the relationship between the council and the presidency? Your members appear to be always at loggerheads with the Jubilee leadership at national level. Recently, it was Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho in the spotlight.

We work quite well but we can see some hiccups. That relationship can be improved. There are two levels of government, and none can work on its own.

In fact, the Constitution says we are interdependent, we work together for the benefit of the people.

I honestly don’t know the exact position on what happened between the presidency and the two coast governors.

But I think it would be fair when the President is visiting a county for the governor to be officially informed.

Officers managing the presidency should look for ways to ensure that protocol is observed.

What do you make of the from your senator, Mr Kiraitu Murungi, and have you decided which party you will run on?

I have several options but we are zeroing in on one existing party. But this is not the opportune time to announce which party it is.

We don’t think we need to form a party when there are so many already in place. We are looking at a party that has history and an ideology that agrees with ours.

Then we take it over and drive the agenda that we have — that of Meru, Mt Kenya East and the whole country because, if I will be running for the presidency in 2022, I will need everyone on board. I do not want to go into details.

As soon as the other Jubilee parties merge, we will unveil ours. I will have been freed from my legal obligation of being a member of The Alliance Party of Kenya (APK), which is in the Jubilee coalition. There are many people who have expressed interest in joining the party.

We have the ability and the capacity to beat Mr Murungi and his brigade at the polls. How many MPs retain their seats after elections? Very few. What you need is proper scouting for the right candidates, and proper mathematics.

What became of the Pesa Mashinani initiative?
The problem has been shortage of resources to complete the exercise of getting all the signatures that we need for the referendum. That is why we have not been able to move that agenda further.
The council will make a decision on how to energise the campaign.

This is not a decision I can make as a person. We have been trying to raise money to finalise the balance of the signatures we were supposed to have.

We raised about 600,000 signatures, with a balance of 400,000. We also need to realise that the CoG is a bipartisan council with governors from both sides of the political divide; there is the opposition and the government side.

Sometimes decisions that have political implications are not easy to push forward, especially where resources are involved.