Open talks needed for success of devolution

The success of devolution will easily come with the full and genuine participation of the people in development agenda. And genuine participation and contribution can only come from an empowered people.

As we head towards the 2016-2017 financial year, many counties are busy doing formalities of engaging communities to look into the budget estimates. I call it formality because in most cases, few participants could be able to analyse the budgets.

Sadly, some sycophants of the ruling class are strategically selected to confuse the crowds in favour of the stated budgets. Some officials also just attend the forums to get allowances at the end of the session.

The youth, who are a majority, are in most cases left out of these skewed communications.

Counties should give space or opportunity for people to critically evaluate and analyse the delivery of services as well as projects before presenting new budget estimates to communities.

I believe that we can do better by adhering to our very progressive constitution to successfully achieve devolution development.