Counties granted roads money

The government has surrendered control of the contentious Sh27 billion meant for the construction of roads in counties.

At the same time, it has ordered the Transitional Authority to recall a gazette notice detailing the transfer of functions to 13 counties.

A meeting held at Deputy President William Ruto’s office in Karen agreed that the national government will take charge of the payroll for all public servants affected by the ongoing devolution for the next six months to give the devolved units time to build capacity.

Mr Ruto announced that the government would initiate enactment of new laws aimed at eliminating barriers identified as obstructing the operations of the devolved governments.

The meeting agreed that functions currently undertaken by Rural Electrification Authority that can be comfortably handled by county governments should be immediately transferred, while those they do not have the capacity to handle can be retained by REA.

The Sh27 billion have been earmarked for the building of roads classified as county roads, which the National Treasury had initially threatened to retain so as to allow Kenya Urban Roads Authority and Kenya Rural Roads Authority to continue presiding over them to avoid confusion over contracts already awarded.

The national government will, however, take responsibility for roads whose contracts had been signed before the budget while the county governments will initiate new road projects under the fund.

The meeting formed two committees to handle payroll issue to ensure smooth transfer of funds payable to government employees and another one to deal with the classification of roads.

The committee on payroll will include four governors, representatives of the National Treasury, ministry of Devolution and Planning, Transitional Authority, Controller of Budget, Commission on Revenue Allocation among others.

Mr Ruto said TA had been instructed to unbundle and have all the agreed functions for all the 47 county governments transferred by Friday.

He said that only 13 counties had satisfactorily applied for functions by Friday last week and that another 12 had made applications by Sunday.

The stormy meeting also saw both the representatives of the National and County governments turn the heat on TA chairman Kinuthia Wamwangi whom they accused of undermining consultations between the two governments.

Mr Wamwangi was forced to immediately withdraw a gazette notice published by the TA over the weekend after Governors complained that motive behind the transfer of functions to only 13 counties excluding the other 34 was sinister.

During the meeting, Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo accused counties of drawing budgets without conforming to the fiscal regulations guiding the process.