Seven point promise by Jubilee Government for Counties

 

Jubilee Party supporters at the manifesto launch yesterday. [DPPS]

The Jubilee administration has pledged to encourage creation of region specific industries in each of the 47 counties to support devolution.

According to its manifesto, launched yesterday, it made seven promises to counties among them to develop industrial havens based on the local resources, if re-elected.

“In the next five years, we will embark on a deliberate effort to harness the potential of each of our counties to distribute economic growth and jobs across the country.

“We will implement a one county-one-product programme to promote development of industries based on products and resource potential that are unique to each county,” reads the manifesto in part.

Jubilee bases its promise for county growth on stimulating development in the villages to spur national growth.

The 70-page manifesto states: “This is the promise of devolution that we have delivered on and will continue to strengthen.”

Stimulate development

“We must continue to stimulate socio-economic development at the grassroots by providing services to beneficiaries at village level, thus enabling the ordinary Kenyan to become an active participant in the development process,” states the party.

The Jubilee Government says that it has enabled creation of county governments by transferring 62,606 officers from the national government after the services were devolved in the new Constitution.

Out of this number health docket received 43,432, agriculture 5,707, livestock 4,989, water 3,016, fisheries 1,551, public works 1,317 and co-operatives 742, alongside others.

According to the manifesto, Jubilee has progressively increased the ratio of revenues allocated to counties from 15 per cent minimum set by the Constitution to 34 percent in the past four years.

“This is more than double the constitutional minimum of 15 percent. Since inception in 2013 about Sh1 trillion will have been disbursed by the end of June 2017, we also completed the historic duty of transferring all the devolved functions to the county Governments, bringing services closer to the people,” states the party.

Rehabilitation of health facilities in counties was also cited as a major achievement by the current Government.

The ruling coalition also says that it will set aside 1 per cent of funds for research and documenting the best practices from the counties.