Keep off county roads, governors warn legislators

Council of Governors (COG) Chairman Peter Munya

Council of Governors (COG) Chairman Peter Munya has questioned MPs’ understanding of the Constitution after the National Assembly debated a Bill that seeks to re-classify roads.

Terming the Kenya Roads Bill 2015 debated by MPs on Thursday as “totally unacceptable”, Mr Munya warned the National Government to keep off all other roads apart from national trunk roads commonly known as highways.

“The Bill seeking to re-classify the roads is contrary to the Constitution which is very clear that roads are divided into two. There are national trunk roads that belong to the National Government, all other roads belong to the counties,” he said.

The Meru governor said MPs are complicating an existing problem by trying to re-classify roads.

“Trying to make Class C and Class D roads to become national trunk roads is engaging in ridiculous arrangements. You cannot take a road linking a local town within a county to another town and call it a national highway, it can’t work. You will be complicating an already existing problem instead of solving it,” he said.

Munya said the comments made by MPs during the Thursday debate show there is a big gap in their understanding of the Constitution.

“If you make a local road a national road then you probably don’t understand why we passed the Constitution 2010 at all,” said the CoG chair.

In February, the governors threatened to challenge the re-classification of roads in court after some roads in Class D were upgraded to Class C and then handed over to the national government.

But MPs accused the county bosses of opposing the re-classification because roads earn them political mileage and give them a chance to make money from big contracts.