Revealed: National government holding on to Sh272b worth of devolved functions

The national government is holding onto devolved functions worth Sh272.2 billion, a new report by the inter-governmental relations agency has shown.

The report, submitted before the Senate Devolution committee, said the functions are still being performed by ministries, departments and agencies 10 years after devolution.

This means that the national government could lose the funds to counties from its annual budget should the report be adopted by the Senate as it is for implementation.

Appearing before the committee chaired by Wajir Governor Abass Mohamed on Tuesday, Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee (IGRTC) chairperson Kithinji Kiragu said the costing was from all devolved functions that were yet to be transferred to the counties.

From the report, the national government is still holding onto various elements of at least 10 decentralised functions contrary to Schedule Four of the Constitution.

According to the Constitution, he said, the functions are expected to be transferred to the county governments together with all its attendant resources including budgets, personnel and other assets.

He said the agency has been unbundling and costing the pending devolved functions that are still being performed by the national government. 

The IGRTC boss, however, said the figure of Sh272.2 billion for functions that were yet to be unbundled is yet to be verified by the National Treasury as the office concerned with costing of functions.

The report reveals that the Ministry of Health and its agencies are performing 45 elements of the health function that exclusively belong to the counties.

“Four new other elements of the function identified and unbundled as concurrent to be transferred to the counties,” the report indicated.

The health functions are worth Sh3.2 billion.

According to the report, the Ministry of Water is still performing 18 elements of devolved water functions with a total budget of Sh58 billion.

In Education, the report has identified 52 elements and unbundled them as exclusive to the county governments and recommended transfer to the devolved units.

The report said the national government is restricted to education policy, standards, curricula, and examinations while implementation of pre-primary education, village polytechnics, home craft centres and childcare facilities is a mandate of the county governments.

Further, the exercise revealed that the Energy ministry and its agencies are still holding onto devolved functions worth Sh59 billion.

Here, four new elements of the function have been identified and unbundled as exclusive to the county government and two elements identified and unbundled as concurrent to be transferred to county governments.

The Agriculture ministry will be worst affected as it will lose Sh105 billion worth of functions with the report identifying 41 elements of functions that should be exclusive to counties but are still with the national government.

The report said the national government is still holding to the functions yet they are only restricted to policy formulation with implementation being an exclusive function of the county government.

“Any subsequent responsibility assigned to the national government should be determined through an intergovernmental mechanism and not part of functional assignment to the national government,” the report stated.

Some 19 elements of Trade function have been identified and unbundled as exclusive to the county governments with 18 more identified as concurrent to be transferred to county governments. The elements have a budget of Sh4.8 billion.

The report said the responsibility of the national government with regards to trade is restricted to international trade where they can develop an international trade policy with different aspects of Trade that county governments can domesticate.

However, IGRTC indicates that the overall mandate of Trade Development and Regulation is an exclusive function of the county governments.

The report also shows that the Ministry of Roads and Transport is holding onto 51 elements of the function belonging to the county governments valued at Sh10.9 billion.

“Six new elements of the function identified and unbundled as concurrent to be transferred to county governments,” the report shows.

According to IGRTC, the national government has no role in road construction save for the responsibility to construct and operate the national trunk roads.

“The only other responsibility related to the national government in relation to the roads function is on provision of standards for the construction and maintenance of other roads by the counties,” the report shows.

Eleven elements of the Tourism and Wildlife function worth Sh31 billion are still being handled by the national government.

Despite IGTRC recommending the transfer of the functions to the devolved units, it has proposed further re-evaluation of the human resource component to identify any pending transfer.

“There was general consensus that currently there exist no human resources to be transferred to the counties as those performing functions at the national level are the national government’s own staff,” the report states.

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