Oparanya rides on flag ship projects to leave rich legacy

The Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya is not as talented as many politicians from the region when it comes to charging crowds at rallies or jumping on stage for a jig whenever a popular song plays.

Despite being the ODM deputy party leader, he is by no means one of the most vocal politicians from Western. But he is arguably one of the best performing governors in Western and Nyanza.

The soft spoken technocrat rubs his hands on his kneecap when making a point.

Having secured his second term in a race that saw about 25 of his former colleagues shown the door, Mr Oparanya lights up when we sit him down to talk about devolution.

Some of the most visible achievements for the Oparanya government has been the rehabilitation and modernisation of Bukhungu Stadium, transforming it into the best sporting area for region.

His government tarmacked more than 50km of road, built a bridge that recently put to shame Chinese contractors building the Sigiri Bridge in neighbouring Busia County when it collapsed, despite costing three times more. The Oparanya Care, a maternal health programme that sees new mothers take home Sh2,000 after child birth and a similar amount every time they visit the hospital to vaccinate their kids has earned him admiration at home and among his peers.

“This encourages mothers not to miss vaccination because they know when they come, they get something for transport. This is the most popular programme,” he says.

He is building a Sh10 billion teaching and referral hospital and has lined up three factories, among them a dairy plant, a tea factory and a maize milling plant as the main projects for his second term.

His government started a program to support school boards hire 550 high school teachers to plug the deficit.

The county set aside Sh10,000 to pay each of the 550 teachers per month under a scheme dubbed ‘top up’.

This matter put the county on a collision course with the Teachers Service Commission, and the county was taken to court. But the court ruled in its favour.

“We distribute those teachers in the ratio of enrolment. For instance we gave schools with one stream one teacher, while those with two streams got two teachers and so on. We said in addition to what the school boards were paying them, we top up Sh10,000 each,” Oparanya says. This costs the county Sh5.5million a month.

He is also doing a 10km per ward per year project of bitumen road that targets to open 300km of rural roads. His government has also hired 3,800 local youth to do other functions among them cleaning and maintenance of roads.

But Oparanya says he has had to fight turf wars with the national government and faced hostility and resistance from local politicians who read mischief and politics in every development project.

“If you recruit people to work at the county, you are accused of hiring your own brothers and sisters,” he says.

Oparanya attributes his success in devolution to experience working with government as former Minister for Planning where he had unfettered access to the statistics of the county such as literacy levels, healthcare, the poverty index and unemployment

“These statistics helped to focus on areas that will have an impact on my people,” he says.

He says although education was largely a function of the national government, he knew that Kakamega was doing very badly. He set up a task force which was headed by the outgoing Moi University Vice Chancellor Laban Ayiro.

“The team came up with a very robust report that showed us the gaps in education and we came in to address them,” Oparanya says.

The report pointed out that the schools had poor infrastructure, shortage of teachers and high levels of teacher indiscipline.

The report also recommended that the county needed to find ways of promoting science subjects, had a shortage of Early Childhood Centres. He says the report recommended construction of a medical school.

In addition, the county has also constructed classrooms blocks for 25 schools, pumping Sh20 million in for each block of about eight classrooms and offices.

“We construct a storey building which has class rooms, an office for the principal and his deputy, a staffroom and a library. Two for every sub county. There is one unique sub county, Nabakholo that got three because of its special problems,” Oparanya says. The county has pumped a total of Sh500million in the project.

The county has spent Sh20 million on each of the national schools in its zone—Kakamega High and Butere Girls - to build classrooms a dormitory to accommodate a county stream – a special stream for students from the county.

The county is also renovating one polytechnic in each sub county and has made polytechnic education free.

“We give Sh15,000 per every student to take of facilities, equipment and run them. We have also tried to equip some and have recruited instructors.”

The county also gives Sh2 million in bursaries for each of its 60 wards. The bursary fund, in its fourth year has a budget of Sh120million per year. “We have taken about twenty students to China to learn engineering,” he says.

County HELB

The county has also developed a mini version of the Higher Educations Loans Board (HELB) to support local students. It is putting Sh20 million every year in this county-HELB, which it hopes to run as a revolving fund to make it self sustaining.

“After four years, the beneficiaries will start repaying the loans. We enlisted HELB to help us in the management because we have no capacity,” he says.

Oparanya says his administration has recruited 3000 ECD teachers, three for every school. It has also set up a committee of five members to run the centers. The county is sponsoring the ECD students by paying Sh1,000 per kid to make the centres free.

“We have about 160,000 ECD pupils and we are in the formative stage to make ECD education free in Kakamega County,” he says.

The county has focused on 12 polytechnics as centres of excellence. Already it has received support from GIZ, a German development agency in agriculture. The county has selected 600 students who will be sponsored through the project.

“After they complete the training we will sponsor them to start projects. For instance those that want to do dairy we shall buy them one cow each, we shall build a fish pond for those who want to do fish farming and so on,” he added. He says this will be another way of creating employment for the youth. The county is also in partnership with Masinde Muliro University to start a medical school.

OparanyaCare

The county is building a Sh10 billion referral hospital which will be used by the university as a training centre of its medical students. The hospital will have a capacity of 750 beds and the county has already pumped Sh2billion in the first phase of the project.

“Health was the most hit. We had a problem when devolution came, most of the doctors ran to their counties and we now have to train ours to sustain their facilities,” he says. “We will have a cancer center, a dialysis centre and a centre of skin diseases. It will be the regional referral hospital.”

But it is the Oparanya Care programme that has earned him most mileage. Under the programme dubbed Linda Mtoto na Mama, mothers are registered depending on their poverty levels.

There are 33,000 mothers currently enrolled and it has attracted technical support from UNICEF. UNICEF has employed technical people to run the programme and has computerised it to boost transparency.

Controversial projects

One of Oparanya's most controversial project has been the Sh200 million he sunk in Mumias Sugar Company.

“We wanted to put this money in a pool so that as farmers deliver cane, they are paid,” he says. But the project was rocked by corruption claims and this saw the county abandon it. The contentious issue was who takes the profit from the sale of sugar.

Oparanya says he decided to diversify the agricultural sector. The county has so far spent Sh400 million to supply dairy animals to farmers.