Thursday, September 2, 2010

Kenya begins reshaping governance

BY SARAH WAMBUI
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept 2 - The government on Thursday announced that it was in the final stages of restructuring the Provincial Administration to pave way for the new county system as spelt out by the new Constitution.

Government spokesman Dr Alfred Mutua who said the move would create and phase out some administrative positions added that regional commissioners would also be deployed to the counties.

He said the government had already re-drawn regional boundaries to include counties and would unveil a new map capturing them.

“The new structures introduce positions of governors and a new Bill will be presented in Parliament to talk about the quality of people who will be in charge of our counties. We are not going to let people who behave like thugs, people who made their money through stealing or people who cannot read run our counties,” he said.

Dr Mutua explained that the national system of governance would still be maintained with a focus on reaching those at the grassroots.

“If you look at countries that have federal structures like the United States, you have the national government plus the regional one. So the state of New York for example has a governor and it is a state by itself. It still has federal offices that do federal work like the national police, state police and city police,” he explained.

He also said that the financial implications of the restructuring efforts would also being considered.

According to Dr Mutua, other government institutions such as the Ministry of Internal Security would also have to re-organise their structures and realign them with the county system.

“Once the modalities have been worked out we will try and see for instance… should the chiefs be managed by the national government or should they be managed by the county government? These modalities will soon be announced,” he said.

He further defended the government against those criticising it for inviting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to the Constitution promulgation ceremony last Friday. He said the move by government was aimed at promoting regional stability as well as facilitate peace talks in Sudan.

“We are not doing things haphazardly; there is a clear process of thought about our national, regional and African interest. In fact as a result of his coming, President Bashir went back home and told his Vice President that Sudan would have a referendum as planned,” he said.

The government spokesman also registered his disapproval of the public spat between the two political wings of the coalition government over the invitation of President Bashir.

“I hope we can get into a culture of solving our things internally. Every family unit will always have problems but you don’t necessarily have to go and shout them outside. If there was lack of flow or misunderstanding, that can be solved internally,” he said.

Dr Mutua also asked Kenyans to shun neo-colonialism and embrace each other and their fellow Africans.

He also reiterated that the government would announce the dates for the recount of the people in Turkana and North Eastern province. Their census results were nullified with the government citing inconsistencies with the data collected.

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