Monday, August 8 on the very eve of the General Elections the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced suspension of gubernatorial elections in Kakamega due to what they reported as mismatch of ballot materials.
The election was later on held on 29th August 2022 after encountering two false starts in what the commission cited staff harassment and intimidation.
H.E. FCPA Fernandez Barasa emerged victorious in a closely fought contest garnering 192,929 votes against the former Senator Cleophas Malala and now Secretary General of the ruling party UDA who garnered 159,508.
In his acceptance speech on the occasion of assumption of office on 15th September, 2022 at Bukhungu Stadium, he was quoted:
“With a bold vision for this county, we embark on a journey of transforming the lives of our people. I believe in our collective potential as a county. I lay a six point agenda on our strategy to realize our aspirations seeking to address: Health, Food security, Wealth creation, Education (ECDE and County Polytechnics), Social Development and Good Governance.’’
The speech though compelling did not widely capture much of his key campaign promises including the much publicised revival of Mumias Sugar Company within his 100 days of office.
Off the speech, the newly installed Governor pledged to effect massive changes within his first 100 days in office to position Kakamega County as the investment hub within the Lake Region Economic bloc.
Wednesday 9th November 2022, the Governor nominated for appointment County Executive Committee Members to assist steer his development agenda to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. All nominees were later approved by the County Assembly on 1st December 2022 and appointed to office.
Beyond the 100 hundred days and counting, Kakamega County once heralded as a beacon of hope for wider aspirations on devolution may be sliding into socio economic and development uncertainty.
The county budget FY 2022/23 was Ksh15.405 billion, with Ksh5,696,087,916 (37%) allocated to development expenditure while Ksh9,709,105,463 (63%) allocated to recurrent expenditure subject to favorable allocation and timely disbursement of sharable revenue, consideration for conditional grants, realisation of own source revenue targets and funding from development partners.
As per the county budget statement, the key focus areas were infrastructure development, improving healthcare system, promoting education and training, employment creation, social welfare programmes that support vulnerable members of the society and improving service delivery quite in line with the Governor’s six point agenda.
The Achilles heel in the Governor’s leadership and performance from the pundit’s assessment is multi-pronged.
H.E the Governor started off hands on presiding over distribution of essential medical supplies, bursaries, subsidised farm inputs as well as launching infrastructure development projects to the excitement of locals.
The reality check though reveals systematic regular lack of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceuticals supplies in local health facilities.
The subsidised farm input program experienced bottlenecks at the distribution centers where majority of the farmers were disfranchised.
Majority of projects launched remain inactive, case in example the upgrading of 21 kilometre Lureko-Indangalasia-Ogalo Road to bitumen launched by the Governor when he honoured an invite to attend Lureko residents public forum.
The Constitution of Kenya 2010 provides for public right to access information. The County Government has not openly disclosed revenue information from equitable share, arrears, cash balance and own source revenue.
There is no published readily accessible information of pending bills, expenditures and general revenue and expenditure performance against budget estimates.
The situation seemingly is being abated by the Controller of Budget who has since stopped issuing published schedules of disbursements to counties. The same spirit has been effectively applied by the National Treasury, the Exchequer.
Much of his public engagement has witnessed blaming and attacks directed at the national government for what he terms constant delay in disbursement of equitable share of revenue from the National Treasury.
One is left to wonder if the delay is an isolated case of Kakamega County or affects many other counties in the country.
Official position of the Treasury though indicates that counties are yet to receive April and May allocation indicating that allocation for the rest of the financial year’s months have been disbursed.
There are cases where Treasury has unnecessarily delayed disbursement of development funds yet there are also cases where absorption of the same has been a challenge.
Kakamega residents should remain alert and posted on the ongoing, rising above parochial politics to demand evidence based demonstrable service.
