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| Ali Roba, Mandera Governor. |
Residents and
the civil society in Mandera County are protesting against a planned tour by
Members of the County Assembly (MCAs) from next week. The MCAs are set to tour
Israel, a trip that is estimated to cost the taxpayers some Sh30 million. The
residents argue that the tour is uncalled for at this time when they are faced
with many challenges. They said the money should have been used for development
matters, among them the improvement of infrastructure that has led to
pastoralist and farmers incurring losses as they cannot access markets due to
bad roads.
Each of the
twenty two members of the Assembly led by Majority Leader Robow, the Bulla Mpya
MCA, will receive two hundred thousand shillings
as an allowance for the trip, exclusive of
the Sh30 million. One wonders why Governors and MCAs have to spend big sums of
money traveling in this digital era when there are alternative ways of
obtaining information.
“We have so
many problems affecting our people and it would be a shame to see the county
representatives traversing the world with our money. We elected them to address
our issues and not to misuse our money,” Says a resident who I sought his view.
As if that is
not enough, Mandera Governor, just like his Wajir and Garissa counterparts, has
been on employment spree, recruiting political cronies and family relations
with abandon. There has been heated debate on the rising wage bill in the
national government, but why are we turning a blind eye on county governments?
Avery
disturbing report was recently released by the Controller of Budgets, which
exposed misappropriation of public funds in scales we never imagined. Counties,
including Mandera, have used billions of shillings on allowances and other
forms of wasteful spending, besides converting counties in to tribal, family
and clan units. The post-independence monster called county government is to
blame for the rising cost of living as the devolved units have aped the
national government’s ‘eating’ culture.
It’s disheartening that those who have been entrusted
with steering our counties-counties that have been marginalized for the last 50
years- towards development are the same ones working to cripple them.
It therefore beats logic that a time when Mandera County
and the entire country is grappling with rising inflation and the national
government is trying to contain a bloated wage bill, Mandera County Assembly is
making an expensive and unnecessary trip to Israel. What happened to Treasury’s austerity measures unveiled last week by Finance Cabinet Secretary Henry
Rotich?
It’s our job to ensure transparency and accountability in
the management of our county funds. The county governments of NEP continue to
thrive on concoctions and are hell-bent on misinformation and misleading the public
for the simple reason of diverting residents’ attention from the real issues.
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