•Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani said the fund will be financed through the annual appropriations by the National Assembly.
•The monies will also be used to establish, manage and coordinate programmes, projects or activities based on annual work programmes.
Image: COURTESY
The government has established a Sh2 billion fund to help the National Drought Management Authority respond to emergencies arising from prolonged dry spells.
Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani said the fund will be financed through the annual appropriations by the National Assembly.
It will also be a common basket for contributions from the private sector, donor support, global climate change and disaster risk financing facilities.
“The fund shall not finance hazards which may include floods, epidemics, wildfires, terrorism and armed conflict,” regulations guiding its usage read.
Yatani said the common basket will help “facilitate faster, transparent, predictable and accountable release of funds for drought risk management.”
It will also provide funds for capacity and technical expertise development to improve drought risk management systems.
The monies will also be used to establish, manage and coordinate programmes, projects or activities based on annual work programmes.
The proposed rules bar the use of the funds for purpose of supporting political parties or entities whereas the NDMA board will oversee the administration and management of the fund.
Speaking to the Star, NDMA CEO James Oduor said the authority has been unable to spend monies allocated by the government for lack of a legal framework.
The authority was in 2019 forced to surrender billions of shillings to the National Treasury for lack of legal basis to spend the same and was left to rely on donors.
The government has thus been funding recurrent costs, per diems, and salaries for authority staff to complement the donor funds.
“We have come a long way to get these regulations. When we have Sh2 billion at our disposal, half of it will go to investment in development activities and a half for drought response,” Oduor said.
He said they will thus have resources for building water pans, sink boreholes and other interventions that would help mitigate drought.
“We could not use the money because the regulations were not ready,” the NDMA boss said, adding that the Treasury had assured they will get the Sh2 billion which they lost during the mop-up to fund Covid-19 response.
“This is the first time the government would be funding NDMA in terms of money for drought response which we usually run to the Treasury whenever drought erupts.
“For the first time, the government will be funding development activities in NDMA, and the rules would be a great relief for residents of areas prone to drought,” Oduor said.
There is a proposed National Drought and Food Security Steering Committee which will be chaired by the Deputy President who will lead a team of Cabinet Secretaries.
Other members would be the chairperson, Council of Governors, who shall be vice-chair of the National Steering Committee. The committee will report to the Cabinet.
“The Cabinet Secretary responsible for matters relating to drought risk management shall be the Secretary of the Steering Committee,” the rules read.
Their job would be to provide policy recommendations on drought response interventions and lead drought and food security interventions during the alarm and emergency stages.
There is established the Inter-Governmental Technical Committee on Drought and Food Security as well as a County Committee on Drought and Food Security.
Yatani says the fund may complement existing government programmes such as water and sanitation; agriculture, livestock and fisheries; education; health, sanitation and nutrition; cash transfers scale-ups; conflict management and resolution; and drought coordination.
The regulations provide that resilience and preparedness shall be allocated up to 50 per cent of the total budget of the fund in each financial year.
Response interventions shall be allocated up to 40 per cent while recovery interventions shall be allocated up to five per cent.
“Where no recovery interventions are required, the money may be allocated to either resilience and preparedness or response interventions,” the regulations read.
The administration costs for running the fund shall not be more than three per cent of the total budgetary provision for the fund.
Any acts of misappropriation of the fund would attract a fine of Sh10 million or five years in jail or both, the new rules read.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
Image: DOUGLAS OKIDDY