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By Antony Gitonga
NAIVASHA, KENYA: The new Cabinet Secretary in charge of health James Macharia has decried the funds allocated to the ministry terming them inadequate.
Macharia who was sworn in last week said that the ministry was allocated by the treasury Sh34.7 billion against the required Sh160 billion.
He was however quick to note that that difference could be addressed through the devolved government and development partners who were committed to assisting the country.
Macharia said that World Bank had expressed its willingness to raise their funding to the ministry from the current 400m dollars to 1billion dollars.
He put on notice staff in the ministry saying that the issue of inefficiency and accountability had to be addressed immediately.
“The biggest issue facing the ministry has been transparency and accountability which have painted us negatively in the eyes of donors,”
Macharia said that the ministry had good policies adding that the biggest challenge they faced was in the implementation.
“Issues like maternal health can be easily achieved through the devolved government by first addressing those vulnerable people in the rural areas,”
The cabinet secretary was speaking in Sawela Lodge Naivasha during a meeting with governors and CIC on key devolution issues in the health sector.
He admitted that the sector faced various challenges like disparities that exist across the country in terms of access to various components of health care.
Bomet governor Isaac Ruto who was present accused the central government of allocating counties too little money to deal with health issues.
He noted that despite devolving 70 percent of functions to counties, they had allocated only 33 percent of the funds.
“These funds will only be used to pay doctors and we call for an increase of funding to around 70 percent so that issues affecting health sector can be addressed by the devolved governments,”
Ruto who is also the president of the governor’s summit took a swipe at the treasury for allocating a partial Sh1 billion to all the counties towards Early Childhood Development (ECD).
“Each county will receive Sh22m towards ECD and this money is expected to pay ECD teachers, buy learning materials and improve infrastructure,” he said.
He said that the governors’ efforts to have a national government budget and economic council meeting had failed to materialize.
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