Parallel governments weighing down counties

By Mohamed Guleid

The devolved system of government is a product of the 2010 Constitution. Kenyans voted for devolution to bring services and decision-making process closer to the people. However, the Constitution making process did not envisage duplication of roles and the attendant fiscal burden. Through an Act of Parliament, the national government retained the old provincial administration to establish an administrative and institutional framework for coordination of national government functions at the national and county levels of governance; to give effect to Articles 131(1) (b) and 132 (3) (b) of the Constitution.

In essence, we have two governments doing the same things at the county level. During President Kibaki’s last days in office, there was a dilemma on what to do with the provincial administration structure. The rationale behind retaining the system was an attempt to avoid complications for the election of the pro-government Jubilee coalition. The opposition, CORD, obviously would have benefitted if the call for dissolution of the provincial administration succeeded. All said and done, after the successful inception of the county government, the burden of the parallel system is becoming apparent.

The administrative structure of both governments looks exactly the same. In fact, the county government is the replica of the old system. The equivalent of the governor is the county commissioner. Both functions have deputies. On the village level there is the chief for the national government and village administrators for the county government. The national government has also retained the staff of the devolved functions, so the counties are expected to recruit their own staff to replace these officers.

All these have consequences on the wage bill! In the case of Isiolo County, if recruitment of staff as envisaged in the Constitution and the County Governments Act is to be fulfilled, the wage bill and recurrent cost would be over Sh2 billion. This means an equal number of people are also employed by national government for the counties meaning the cost would be double. This does not make rational sense.  Unless the intention is to create employment, sustainability would remain questionable.

My suspicion is the national government is unable to decide what to do with the parallel system of government. On the one hand there are people in favour of status quo while others are afraid of the consequences of retrenching thousands of people without an alternative. One can really wonder why there should be two chiefs in the same location. Of course it would be naïve to expect a retrenchment considering the political and social implications. But possibly a bit of honesty from the side of the national government would have cleared the air. The Treasury Cabinet Secretary has admitted that borrowed money shall be source of funding for the county government operations. Therefore the logic in financing a huge wage bill through borrowing makes no sense.

A good suggestion would be to absorb the people from the provincial administration into the county government instead of demanding that county governments recruit potentially expensive labour force.

If service delivery is the same there is no need to duplicate agents of government. Instead of recruiting village administrators, the county governments can improve terms of services for the current crop of chiefs and absorb them in the system. This will be in line with constitutional requirements to phase out the provincial administration in five years. In the meanwhile, the county governments should liaison with the provincial administration to absorb them on a temporary basis.

Inability of county government to finance projects because of shortage of funds will reinforce the suspicion that the national government is not willing to fund devolution. The assumption by many is there is a clique within the national government, bent on watering down the devolved system. Such suspicions can be erased if a genuine and a rational approach is undertaken on the seemingly parallel system. At the moment, the Treasury Secretary has said the devolved system would be financed through borrowed money; this is a matter of great concern considering there is no clear exit strategy.

The writer is Isiolo Deputy Governor