MOMBASA, KENYA: The Commission on Revenue Allocation ( CRA) has unveiled the criterion used to determine how 14 out of 47 counties will benefit from the Sh3 billion Equalisation Fund.
CRA Chairman Micah Cheserem
The special fund is established in the constitution to assist Kenya’s most impoverished areas and is calculated as a fraction of Kenya’s annual national revenue.
On Friday CRA Chairman Micah Cheserem disclosed that widespread poverty, food insecurity water scarcity for human and livestock use, inadequate educational facilities, impassable roads and hostile terrain, makeshift medical facilities and lack of access to electricity were the factors that the commission used to allocate the funds in the identified counties.
Speaking in Mombasa during the launch of the Pastoralists Parliamentary Group (PPG), Cheserem said they have used an equitable sharing formula in distribution of the funds explaining that 45 per cent was based on the counties’ population, 20 per cent on poverty levels while 8 per cent on the topography of the county.
“The criterion used was based on the Pastoralists counties priority expenditures are water, roads education and health facilities. There is urgent need to invest in water resources because currently the identified counties are faced with water scarcity for human and livestock use,” he explained.
Cheserem argued that water harvesting should be a priority for Pastoralists counties and that priority should also be given to infrastructure adding that impassable roads have hindered economic development.
The identified counties are Turkana, Mandera, Wajir, Marsarbit, Samburu, West Pokot, Tana River, Narok, Kwale, Garissa, Kilifi, Tiata Taveta, Isiolo and Lamu.
The PPG are meeting in Mombasa and the workshop has brought together Members of Parliament, Governors, Speakers and Senators from the marginalised counties as identified by the CRA. And former National Assembly Speaker Francis Ole Kaparo had expressed concerns that some counties had been sneaked in the privileged areas as part of the Arid and Semi Arid area accusing the commission of biasness.
“Areas like Embu and Meru are classified in the ASAL’s, something that I do not understand because such counties are really developed. A place where they grow tea and coffee is not an arid land so the Commission should stop misleading Kenyans,” said Kaparo.
By Linah Benyawa, The Standard
