Friday, September 10, 2010

Scheme to give Kenya chiefs more powers unveiled



Chiefs from Kisauni at a past function. The chain of provincial commissioners, districts commissioners down to the village elder will be retained and continue to be answerable to the central government. Photo/FILE

By LUCAS BARASA lbarassa@ke.nationmedia.com AND PETER LEFTIE pmutibo@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Thursday, September 9 2010 at 22:30

Paramount chiefs are to be brought back, given more responsibilities and paid better, according to plans for the restructured provincial administration.

The chiefs, invented by the colonial government and effectively used to suppress their regions, were done away with in the 1980s.

The provincial administration will be retained and in some cases expanded in a complex structure announced by Internal Security and Provincial Administration permanent secretary Francis Kimemia.

The chain of provincial commissioners, districts commissioners down to the village elder will be retained and continue to be answerable to the central government.

Six PCs and 22 regional commissioners will be sent to the 47 counties, Mr Kimemia said. A detailed scheme of how things will look is expected to be released next week by the Office of the President. A team at OP has been working on the new structure.

The Committee of Experts (CoE), which wrote the Constitution, appeared uncomfortable with the wholesale retention or expansion of the old system and warned that the restructured administration must keep off the day-to-day running of counties.

Mr Kimemia, Internal Security Minister George Saitoti and assistant minister Joshua Ojode discounted reports that PCs will be sacked under the new Constitution, saying they will be retained, given new titles and re-deployed to the counties.

Under this arrangement, PCs are to coordinate a cluster of counties to be classified as zones, or given desk jobs in Nairobi. “Under the clusters, Western Province could be merged with Nyanza to form one zone, Central with Eastern and parts of Rift Valley. The zones would not be more than five or six,” Mr Kimemia said.

Regional Commissioners will on the other hand be renamed county coordinators and re-deployed to oversee the operations of the National Government in a number of counties lumped together bearing common features.

Prof Saitoti and Mr Ojode explained that the provincial administration will be renamed national administration, while DCs, DOs, chiefs and their assistants will be retained. “Restructuring does not in any way imply scrapping or dissolving of the provincial administration.

“The offices of DCs, DOs, chiefs and assistant chiefs will remain as representative and coordinators of national government functions in their respective areas of jurisdiction,” Prof Saitoti said.

“We are just changing the titles of PCs but their jobs remain intact, the rest, including DCs, DOs and chiefs, are not affected at all, their jobs are secure,” Mr Ojode.

However, CoE chairman Nzamba Kitonga said the new face of the provincial administration should not interfere with the spirit of devolution.

Mr Kitonga said the administrators should confine themselves to functions of the national government in a county such as security and conflict resolution. “In as long as they understand their new mandate in the new dispensation, there is nothing wrong. They should not purport to govern the counties,” he said.

He said the CoE felt that were the provincial administration to remain as it is, it would have made nonsense of devolving powers to the grassroots. “We wanted the provincial administration restructured to ensure there was no conflict with the instruments of self governance in counties,” he said.

Mr Kitonga argued that since the provincial administration was created by Parliament, the CoE could not determine its fate.

Creatures of the constitution

“They very institution that created it (provincial administration) will determine where they belong but counties are sacrosanct because they are creatures of the Constitution,” he said. The government plans to scrap at least 500 locations and reduce the number of divisions to rationalise administrative units.

The final list of the administrative units to be phased out will be ready by next week, Mr Kimemia said.There are 500 locations whose administrators either retired or have been newly created, the PS said. Mr Kimemia said districts will have two or three divisions.

Factors to be used in determining which administrative units will be phased out include population, size, economic activity, cultural and other unique characteristics, the PS disclosed. For instance, cattle rustling-prone Pokot, Samburu and Turkana could be lumped together under one county coordinator versed with local issues.

The changes will be made in the next one month, Mr Kimemia said. He said DCs will remain in the districts and work under the regional county coordinators. Vast regions like North Horr and Turkana and other arid and semi-arid lands would get more administrative areas to attract development.

The PS said the government would consult locals before rationalising the administrative areas so that their interests are considered. The government, he added, is working on re-introducing the office of paramount chiefs, a system phased out in the 1980s.

“We want people who who are respected by the communities, understand their cultural interests and could oversee a number of chiefs.

No comments:

Post a Comment