Fix row on road agencies
What you need to know:
- As currently constituted, the Kenya National Highways Authority, the Kenya Urban Roads Authority, and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority are responsible for road management.
- Although they are allocated funds to build roads in the various jurisdictions, they have not been doing much.
The management of roads is a shared responsibility between the national and the county governments.
However, the existing structures seem to negate this arrangement.
As currently constituted, the Kenya National Highways Authority, the Kenya Urban Roads Authority, and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority are responsible for road management.
While the first agency is responsible for all major national highways, the other two handle urban and rural roads, which are now managed by the counties.
This is the issue that five governors from Nyanza have raised, arguing that the rural and urban roads authorities should be disbanded because they are no longer tenable under devolution.
The bone of contention is that the agencies are duplicating the functions of county governments.
Although they are allocated funds to build roads in the various jurisdictions, they have not been doing much.
Since the county governments are accountable to the people, the rural and urban authorities should be done away with and instead the resources allocated to them assigned to the counties.
It does not make sense to continue having the two agencies when their functions have been taken over by other bodies.
