The new constitution has no provision for the provincial administration.
Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang said Friday that the new constitution had two clear levels of government; national and devolved.
Kajwang was reacting to an assertion by Internal Security minister George Saitoti that the officers will retain most of their core functions under the new constitutional dispensation.
"What Saitoti and Kimemia proposed yesterday (Thursday) is not restructuring. It is actually a reinforcement of the provincial administration. In fact it is an enlargement of the powers of the provincial administration," said Kajwang.
"The intention of creating counties was necessitated by the fact that the people felt oppressed by the central government as represented by the provincial administration. If there was anything popular that we heard wherever we went during campaigns was that there will be no chief and if there will be a chief he will be elected," Kajwang added.
He said the country was no longer in a campaign mood hence "we must be bold and tell our PCs, DCs and DOs they must pack up and go because that is the law and let nobody cheat them."
The minister said if the provincial administration has to be restructured then it has to be done by parliament and if that is the case then they must be answerable to devolved government.
"There's no way we can have two parallel governments one answerable to state house and another to the Governor. Therefore the only way we can restructure is by asking them to report to the devolved government," he said.
Saitoti had said that most of the core functions of the provincial administration particularly the co-ordination of Government business in the field are still vested on the national government and would continue to be performed by the system of National Administration that comes out of the restructuring of the provincial administration envisaged in the sixth schedule.
The minister enumerated a number of functions that the provincial administration was currently undertaking which are assigned to the National Government.
These he said include; harmonization of National Government policies and functions at field level with those of the County Government, coordination and harmonization of National Development initiatives, coordination of national security, conflict resolution and management, coordination of security and disaster management.
"The position of provincial administration in the new constitution is clearly articulated in the Sixth schedule Article 17 in which provided that within five years the system commonly known as provincial administration be restructured to accord and respect the devolved system of Government. Restructuring does not in any way imply scrapping or dissolving provincial administration," said Saitoti.
However, Kajwang argues that Kenyans wanted to move from the central government to local government hence the executive authority is vested and exercised by County Executive in accordance with the new constitution.
"Anybody who will interfere with the implementation or the spirit of this constitution must be ready for the real ‘mapambano'(opposition). This is not a joke and there's no shortcut to this thing," said Kajwang.
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