Kiambu MCAs have unanimously passed the county's revenue allocation bill which paves way for each of the 60 wards to get Sh10 million for development projects.
The county revenue allocation bill was tabled in the assembly by the Finance and Economic Planning committee chairperson Beth Wanjiku who said that there was extensive consultation with the public and executive over it.
The bill seeks to provide equitable allocation and use of county resources.
It provides a mechanism for setting aside Sh10 million per ward in development expenditure.
Riabai MCA Hezron Gachui said he expected some changes in the allocation per ward.
“My concern is that since we did public participation, the public proposed 15 per cent and others proposed 45 per cent allocation per ward. I expected the report tabled in the assembly to have over Sh10 million allocation,” Gachui said.
He said Sh10 million is just 2.8 per cent of Kiambu county's budget which is too little to do effective development.
“I was proposing that we at least start with a seven per cent allocation per ward as the minimum, that is about Sh25 million per ward which was challenged in the assembly,” he said.
He expressed concerns that in the future, the passing of the bill into law will do a lot of damage to residents as the amount is too little.
“For example, a three kilometres road will costs over Sh4 million to construct, with this in mind, the Sh10 million allocation will then only construct two roads in the wards which is little development. If you take a county like Murang'a which collects a revenue of Sh800 million to Sh1 billion, the wards are allocated Sh18 million per financial year. In Narok county, the governor allocated Sh100 million each to the 30 wards. Kisumu allocated Sh20 million as a minimum and Busia allocated Sh25 million. We were insisting that in Kiambu, wards should be allocated more since we have a budget of Sh21 billion,” he said.
Karuri MCA Peter Wainaina said the allocation was little but they agreed that for a start, they work with that.
“We have proposed that the allocation of that fund be done on a quarterly basis so that every three months we have a project in every ward,” he said.
Juja MCA Jeremiah Kiama said the allocation once implemented well will see the funding increased.
“We will be having projects that are managed from the ward level and those will not be the only projects being implemented as the governor will also be doing his own projects in our wards,” he said.
He however said the bill ought to be fine-tuned so that every financial year the allocation is increased as there are a lot of projects that need to be done.
