President Ruto applauds Kenyan governors for their efforts

President William Ruto applauded Kenyan governors for their efforts, stating that they are making the right moves. He said that the governors are showing good leadership and are working hard to improve the lives of Kenyans. He also said that the government is committed to working with the governors to ensure that all Kenyans benefit from their efforts.
This is good news because it shows that the country is finally starting to come together and work towards a common goal. This meeting shows that there is a possibility for a bright future, where cooperation is the norm and not the exception.
The dispute between the Council of Governors (CoG) and the Treasury over revenue allocation has been ongoing for a few months now. The CoG has been demanding Sh425 billion from the Treasury, while the latter has only offered Sh 383 billion. However, it seems that this matter is finally set to be resolved. President William Ruto has committed to timely disbursement of funds to County Governments, which will go a long way in hastening devolution and smoothing out service delivery.
Funding counties late can also breed corruption. Counties have not received their full allocation and will be required to spend their remaining allocation before the end of June. Such unpreparedness will cause counties to spend quickly, cutting corners and breeding corruption.
It is clear that devolution is key to Kenya’s development and the President and Governors must work to ensure that they scale up partnerships in all the key sectors to ensure there is true economic transformation.
In particular, agriculture, job creation, security, health and housing are areas where the two levels
The government should work hard to cooperate to ensure that the economy grows.
The President has also directed the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee to make sure that all pending functions are transferred to counties within six months Governors should take heed of the President’s words encouraging them to endeavour to enhance harmony among themselves, unite and routinely engage.
It was also good to hear that the two levels of government have agreed to end the culture of hostility, confrontation and litigation that have been disruptive, inefficient and wasteful.
Governors agreed with the government to withdraw all pending cases in courts and seek a way of amicably resolving them.
The Council of Governor chairperson Ann Waiguru said that they were keen to resolve the impasse around the revenue allocation. This is important to ensure that counties are well resourced to meet their obligations to the people.
With our annual budget going past Sh3 Trillion, giving the County Government less than half a trillion as it is happening is underfunding them and we must improve. If we are to achieve the key objective of Devolution, which is to ensure resources trickle down, we must increase the funding.
President Ruto applauds Kenyan governors for their efforts.
Additionally, the meeting also agreed to enact laws to enhance devolution while a committee has been formed to look into State Corporations that are also carrying out devolved functions.
It was refreshing to see Governors commit that as head of County Governments, they will continue instituting measures to cut on recurrent expenditure and adopt innovative strategies for increasing own-source revenue in order to increase budget allocation for development programmes.
Governors and county governments must show how they are spending the money for development purposes. Development expenditure must be increased while recurrent expenditure is reduced.
It is also important that the two levels of government work together to enhance the County Enhancement Revenue Policy meant to help County Governments enhance their own local revenues must be speeded up.
Once Counties are able to collect their own revenue adequately, Governors will have little room to complain about underfunding or delay in disbursement from the National Treasury.
We must ensure that there are enhanced consultations between the different players to ensure that we achieve even more that we have done in the last three years.
No single issue regarding devolution should stall due to differences of opinions between the different players. Those who achieve a lot in regards to the delivery of devolution must be rewarded while those who fail in their roles must suffer the consequences.