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Govt indicts councils over performance
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- Published on Sunday, 22 June 2008 23:21
According to experts, the poor showing is a result of the authorities’ small sizes. Poor garbage collection has been cited as a challenge to local authorities. Picture by James Keyi .Ten out of the 27 civic authorities in the region are categorised as ‘small,’ hence their limited viability," said Nyanza Provincial Local Government Officer, Mr Isaac Kirui.
He cited Nyamache Town Council, which has less than 100 employees. "It is not fair to classify Nairobi City Council, whose annual revenue is in billions, in the same group with Suneka Town Council. The latter’s yearly revenue can barely reach a million," he argued.
Devolved funds such as Local Authorities Transfer Fund were introduced in 1990 to help run councils. This is yet to show results in Nyanza. In the 2006/07 financial year, the allocation for Nairobi was Sh1.3 billion, while Suneka Town Council got Sh10.4 million. Since inception of Latf, the Government has released Sh37.8 billion to councils for development.
This year’s allocation is Sh9.3 billion. Last month, Local Government minister Musalia Mudavadi put non-performing councillors on notice, saying councils that could not sustain themselves would be merged. Mudavadi said the ministry would soon seek public and professional opinion on which councils should be amalgamated to safeguard services.
But Kirui says overstaffing at lower cadres of council’s employees affected smaller local authorities. Ms Peris Teyie, an expert in urban planning, said council staff were paid poorly, adding that this had made it difficult for them to retain professionals. "But poor revenue collection even for the small councils has hampered their efforts to meet targets. There is lack of proper collection of rates," said Teyie, a lecturer in urban planning at Maseno University.
She also attributed high debts to lack of links with institutions, hence failure to acquire divergent professional support. "They have also failed to come up with sustainable projects to ensure constant supply of revenue," she said.She said devolved funds from the Government through Local Authority Latf were often used to pay workers instead of project implementation.
According to Latf regulations, 65 per cent of Latf should be used for service delivery, while 35 per cent is earmarked for operations and salaries.
Kirui said many civic authorities did not meet deadlines, hence the failure to secure fund from the Treasury. argued that lack of professionalism in running the affairs of the bodies was also a major hindrance to good performance.
"Unlike the big authorities like Kisumu with personnel such as the town planner and an environment officer, the small ones do have such experts," he said. Kirui, however, said is was perplexing that Homa Bay County Council and Migori Municipal Council, which are categorised as big were among the poor performers. "I am waiting for a report from the town clerks on why the two performed poorly," he told The Standard. Migori Municipal Council Town Clerk, Mr Silas Ouma, said non-completion of projects was behind poor performance.
"In the last financial year, a number of roads, water and school projects were not completed. And since performance is basically on meeting deadlines, we were ranked poor," Ouma said, adding that he would not be in a position to give a detailed judgment since he was only two months old at the council.
"I cannot ascertain corruption at the council. Maybe I will talk about it once I get fully acquainted with operations and ongoing projects," he said.
Since the inception of Latf, Migori municipality, with 153 employees, has been allocated Sh103 million. It received Sh24 million in the last financial year. Kirui said since the evaluation has only been done twice, some civic authorities had not taken it seriously. "I believe in this financial year many town clerks with take the performance evaluation seriously and register improvement," he said.
