• Weekly briefings through Speaker Elachi will be held giving updates on the progress of the NMS.
• County and water firm to start distributing of soaps, disinfectants and water to informal settlements.
Nairobi MCAs will have a special sitting this week to realign the supplementary budget with the needs arising from the coronavirus pandemic. It will focus on the health sector.
Speaker Beatrice Elachi said the assembly will also establish plans to help the Nairobi Metropolitan Services with its new roles through budgetary allocation.
This comes after the county assembly leadership on Friday met with Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) director general Mohammed Badi.
On Thursday, Badi met legislators led by Senator Johnson Sakaj and they assumed him of their full support and intention to realign the budget to support his work.
“The House Business Committee which I chair will have to sit and come up with the main agenda to be discussed in the sitting. We want to show our support to Badi and his new team that was tasked to lead Nairobi in the next two years,” Elachi said.
The Speaker said the supplementary budget will mainly focus on more funds to the health sector to handle Covid-19.
Currently, Nairobi is leading with 28 positive cases of coronavirus out of the 38 reported nationwide.
The assembly leadership and MD of Nairobi Sewerage and Water Company Nahashon Muguna agreed that the firm and the new commissioner would distribute of soaps, disinfectants and water to informal settlements.
Elachi also said the assembly leadership presented the Annual Development Plan 2019-20 for 2020-21 financial year and County Integrated Development Plan 2017-22.
Minority Whip Peter Imwatok said the special sitting will look into the reallocation of budgetary votes of the four transferred functions, Imwatok said. They have been transferred from the city-county to the national government and MMS Badi's office.
They are health, transport, public works, planning and development.
Staff affected by the transfer -- replaced by seconded national government officials --will be redeployed elsewhere.
The assembly has promised to support the NMS tasked with streamlining urban renewal housing projects in Pangani and Jevanjee. Contracts were awarded in 2018 but works have yet to begin.
The new team was also tasked with implementing the Nairobi City Railway Master Plan to redevelop 425 acres around the Central Railway Station. The aim is to create a multi-model in the CBD.
The new NMS team is to ensure garbage is efficiently collected.
In general, it is to restore Nairobi's status as the Green City Under the Sun.
NMS is also to crack down on illegal dumpsites and ensure industries and restaurants did not discharge effluent into rivers.
In 100 days, the team is expected to gazette the legal solid waste dumpsites for both public and private solid waste collectors.
In the same timeline, the NMS will be expected to come up with strategies of equitable water distribution under the rationing programme.
Edited by R.Wamochie