KikuyusForChange

As a follow-up to our discussion on Devolved Funds we participated in the on-going review of the CDF & devolved fund legislation that is being carried out by the CDF Review Task Force Committee that was seating at KICC. Their mandate is to receive proposals from stakeholders, special interest groups & the general public, on amendments that should be made to the CDF legislation to make it more effective & efficient. Our presentation was based on our discussion forum in Lenana Mount in July and we both made an Oral Submission as well as presented them with a memorandum based on the notes of our discussion.  

Our Oral Submission touched on the following:

On Saturday 18th July 2009 Kikuyusforchange Lobby Group held a discussion forum on devolved funds. There were a total of 45 people who attended the forum, with most of them being constituency-based stakeholders representing 19 of the 29 constituencies from Central province. We also had several legislators in attendance: i.e. Hon. Engineer Muriuki Karue, Hon. Peter Kenneth, Assistant Minister for Planning & MP for Gatanga, Hon. George Thuo, Government Chief Whip & MP, Juja, & Hon. Moses Muihia, former MP for Gatundu North. We also had special guests from Rift Valley, Nyanza & Eastern provinces as well as members from the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), Release Political prisoners (RPP) and a few other civil societies & NGOs. The Key Resolutions agreed upon in that were meeting were as follows:

1)     Operational Model:

We proposed that for devolved funds to have the kind of effect expected at grassroots level, the government must establish a uniform operational model for all the 210 constituencies, to manage all the combined devolved funds into a constituency. This model must be self-sustaining, non-partisan, and also have an inbuilt mechanism of incorporating & involving constituency stakeholders at each level of its operations. We therefore propose that the government should develop a CDF Management Programme for each constituency, which will, in a structured & transparent way, involve constituency stakeholders in a process that does the following:

1. Identifies & prioritizes all the needs in the constituency that need funding from public funds.
2. Integrates all these needs into one document that is then used for the constituency’s financial planning.
3. Develops these needs into a strategic plan for the constituency.
4. Manages the processes of disbursing the necessary funds per need through a centralized accounting office/system to ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability, as avoid duplication & bureaucracy, and be effective
5. Audits expenditure per specific project, as well as for the overall constituency, regularly & thoroughly.
6. Reviews actual project delivery and analyses the effects of each project on the constituency’s overall development.
7. Provides a central place where all the information on the processes above, as well as the audit & performance reports, are easily accessible both to the local people in a constituency, as well as to other members of the general public.
8. Equips interested members of the public, both at local and national level, with the skills necessary to perform social audits on public projects, or of the use of public funds.
9. Provides a platform upon which constituency stakeholders as well as the general public can ask questions, raise concerns and/or obtain clarifications on unclear information.
10. Provides forums, preferably bi-annually, but at least once a year, where political leaders (both parliamentary & civic) as well as all executive officers involved in managing a constituency’s devolved funds are available at the constituency, to discuss and engage with the local public & stakeholders on the use of their development funds.

2)     Information Availability

We recommended that a legally binding system be established that provides easily accessible information on ALL funds devolved to the constituencies, all the processes involved (eg as above), the audit & performance reports and any other information related to this. This information should be in a format & style that makes it easy for the ordinary mwnanchi to understand.  We proposed that an easier way to ensure this is done would be for the task force to support the passing of the Freedom Of Information Act that is currently in bill form and that would then make it legally enforceable for information on this & other government initiatives, to be made available to the public.

3)     Cultural Centres

We proposed that part of the devolved funds be set aside to establish, develop & manage cultural centres that provided historical & current information on the various cultures of Kenya, especially as regards ethnicity/tribalism. We stated that a lot of Kenya’s inter-ethnic tension is derived from political manipulation of ethnic cultural differences and ignorance of such differences by various communities, about the others. We recommended that were information on all communities in Kenya easily available at Constituency level, the ordinary citizen would be equipped to neutralize politicians who tried to apply ethnic politics. This would assist the country in peace, which leads to development, as well as enhance national unity & cohesion. (This was not part of our Lenana Mt. discussion and arose as a discussion with the commissioners, as they sought to understand what kikuyusforchange is about)

Tags: Constituency Devolved Funds, Eng. Karue, George Thuo, Peter Kenneth