- The Mombasa county government has been setting as its own source revenue target, amounts that it has never achieved before.
- This financial year’s target is Sh4.8 billion.
Image: BRIAN OTIENO
The Mombasa County government on Thursday received a thumbs up from civil society at the Coast over its source revenue collection.
Coast Civil Society Network for Human Rights chair Zedekiah Adika noted positive progress.
“At the end of the last financial year, we passed the Sh4 billion mark to reach Sh4.4 billion. The other financial year it was Sh3.9 billion.
“At the end of this financial year we are likely to cross the Sh5 billion mark,” he said.
The Mombasa government has been setting targets it has never achieved before. This financial year’s target is Sh4.8 billion.
Adika spoke at Hotel Sapphire during the launch of the third phase of the implementation of the Timiza Ugatuzi project under the Kenya Devolution Program (KDP), through ACT, supported by the UKAID,
Timiza Ugatuzi will make devolution more effective in Kenya. Particular emphasis is on improving service delivery and poverty reduction.
“Today we are launching the project for the next six months and there are several activities that we will be focusing on. One of them is the own source revenue.
“We are looking to progress the accountability and effectiveness,” Adika said.
The CSO Network chair said they will be monitoring four health facilities in the county, including Mlaleo, Kongowea, Junda and Maweni health centres, to ensure they have state-of-the-art facilities for effective and quality service delivery to residents.
Already, the CSOs said, there is progress in the facilities but there are certain aspects that still need to be improved.
One of the aspects is the deployment of more health officers in those facilities and a better supply of medicines to them.
The Timiza Ugatuzi will target CSOs to provide checks and balances to the county.
Adika said they will also push to have functions at the national government level devolved to counties. These include the health and agriculture functions.
“Timely release of resources to the county governments from the national government are among our top priorities,” he said.
The CSOs will look at certain legislation that affect counties including the Division of Revenue Bill, which Adika said the national government is trying to reduce.
“They have allocated Sh380 billion but we think that if they follow the law and going by the trends that happen, it is important that the counties get more money,” Adika said.
Counties are yet to receive a cent from the exchequer for this financial year 2024/2025.
The CSOs said strengthening institutions is key to achieving success in devolution, and Mombasa County has done a commendable job in that.
The County Budgetary Economic Forum is one such institution but Adika said more has to be done.
The internal audit committee at the county executive is yet to be established and it is a requirement by the Auditor General and Controller of Budget offices.
“We are going to insist that it is put in place,” Adika said.
The youth bulge in Mombasa is growing by the day and there is a need to put more resources in vocational training institutions, Adika said.
Insecurity, the CSOs say, can only be solved using long-term strategies and funding education is among the best ways to tackle the issue.
The Mombasa county assembly needs to be opened up more to the public through various channels like free live broadcasting of the sessions on radio as it is done in Turkana county, Adika said.
Speaker of the assembly Aharub Khatri in March said they will be conducting house business during Mashinani Sessions, where the assembly will be meeting at the grassroots on a rotational basis in each of the wards, occasionally.
This way, Khatri said the public will have a chance to ask directly what their representatives have done for them.
Malusha Abedi, the chair of CSOs in Taita Taveta county, called on political leaders not to allow the county allocations to be reduced.
Abedi said the amounts the counties receive are inadequate, further reducing the amount will kill devolution but the future generations as well.
During the Devolution at 10 celebrations in Eldoret, President William Ruto said all county functions will be released to the counties in the next 60 days.
“Counties must be protected at all costs, “ he said.
Abedi said corruption must be fought.
ACT Kenya officer Florence Osoo said the Coast CSOs have shown good cooperation between counties and themselves.
“When we started this program there was not very good cooperation between the CSOs and the counties. We saw this when they were developing the youth policy for Mombasa,” Osoo said.
The KDP‘s third phase will end in March 2025 and the third phase will consume Sh4.5 million.
“We are moving towards consolidating the gains made since 2021,” Osoo said.
Image: BRIAN OTIENO