DEVOLVED FUNDS INITIATIVES IN KENYA, A BLESSING OR A CURSE

The government of Kenya has made deliberate efforts to decentralize most of its development projects over the past five years, key among them, the projects aimed at meeting the MDGs. More precisely, in the year 2007-2008 budgetary allocations, more than Ksh 58 Billion went to devolved structures. One of the devolved fund regimes instituted under this period was Constituency Development Fund through the CDF Act, which was later changed to CDF amendment act of 2007. The fund comprised of an annual budgetary allocation equivalent to 2.5% of all the government ordinary revenue collected in every financial year. Constituency development fund is managed at the national and the grass root levels. At the national level there are constituency development fund boards and the constituency fund committees, while at the grass roots the fund is mainstreamed in the provincial administration structure under the District development Committee (DPC), Constituency Development Fund Committee (CDFC), Locational Development Committees (LDC), and the Ward Development Committees (WDC).

Other decentralized projects that enjoy this synonymous resource distribution in Kenya include The Local Authority Transfer Fund, Constituency Bursary Fund, Free Primary Education Fund, Constituency HIV/AIDS Fund, The Roads Maintenance Levy Fund, Rural Electrification Levy Fund, The Water Service Trust Fund, The Women Enterprise Fund, The National Development Fund For Persons With Disability, And The Poverty Eradication Fund.

With political temperature of the country on the rooftop and the once cherished national heritage ailing from years of blatant abuse by the ruling class, the adoption of devolution in most of the projects under implementation and the empowerment of communities on governance is perhaps one of the few programmes that have helped the government of Kenya to redeem its already tattered image in the critical eyes of the public. For the fast time in the history of development in Kenya, failure in projects implementation is not only seen as an abdication of responsibility by the government of the day but also a letdown on the part of the public in playing their rightful role of being the watchdog of the government. A baseline survey that was done on inclusive governance project by Cities in Partnership with Communities (CIPAC) in July 2009 alluded to the failing responsibility by the public in performing this social and moral role of being the governments’ exchequer. The survey was done to examine the rate of public participation in local governance process and it was ascertained that 74.6% of the people that were interviewed had never made personal efforts to solve the problems facing them including poverty, lack of information, and participation in government based community initiatives. 88.9% of the people had knowledge of the widely publicised CDF, LATF, CBF and women development fund but had very little information on the other fund regimes, and only 7.1% of the people had taken personal initiative to establish whether the disabused funds were planned and used in the interest of the public. One would be interested to know the logic behind these mind boggling statistics on community participation on national issues which are ideally meant to benefit the common Wanainchi (public), but with close to 90% of the respondents interviewed in the survey admitting that they had never met or contacted their area District Commissioner, and 85% pronouncing that they had never met a political party official or official of any government ministry, the reality of the figures could not have been farther away from the truth.

Most people in Kenya are generally behind news or simply, lack interest on the government’s new initiatives of spearheading development through the bottom-up approach of engaged governance. This is mainly due to failure on the part of the government in rising above board in building public confidence on the new institutions of development. Undemocratic appointments to the decentralised government structures render them white elephant projects for use and abuse by the serving political leaders, much to the chagrin of the public. For instance the appointment of the Constituency Development Fund Committee does not allow for community participation in a free and fair election. As such the members of parliament exercise their own discretion in the appointment of people to the committees. Another failure on the part of the government, as was confirmed in the survey by CIPAC, is in creating awareness and capacity on the devolved funds at the community level. Many people are unaware of the devolved funds let alone participating in the devolved projects, there is need to adequately empower communities on various aspects of their rights such as participation in local democratic structures, monitoring and evaluation of projects, civic engagements, political and economic development.
The use of unstable and incoherent social organizations is also a major challenge facing the success of community participation in national issues. Inept and corrupt government officials prefer to work with ghost organizations in the society at the expense of credible community led organizations, this has greatly shredded the confidence of the public in these new development initiatives. Nevertheless, some members of the community are also very resistant to the new transformations hence are unwilling to participate in these community led initiatives. Abject poverty in most communities is also a course of concern to the initiatives as most people are perpetually tied to lowcome jobs hence their focus is skewed to meeting their immediate basic needs as opposed to the long term development projects targeted by devolution, such people usually have very limited time out of their income generating activities to participate in the new establishments.

Despite the shortcomings that plague devolved democratic structures of development in Kenya, both the critics and the sympathisers of the government cannot ignore one fact; the bottom-up approach of development is a shared responsibility between the government and the citizens and its success or failure lies in the hands of all players in policy making including the citizenry. Since the inception of this approach of development in the country, more gains have been seen at the grass roots in terms of employment opportunities, schools enrolments and increased construction of local infrastructures than at any other time in the history of Kenya, but in order to make these initiatives last the test of time, serious checks and balances must be put in place to ensure that this holistic development approach of engaged governance is watertight from abuse and easy manipulation by people with less regard for the wider society

WE CAN ALL PLAY A ROLE IN SAVING THE WORLD

A story is told of a Machiavellian king who wanted to eliminate all the wise men in his village so that he could control his kingdom according to his own digression. The king picked five of his strongest young men and gave them a live bird with instructions that they visit all the wise men in the village and one of them would hold the bird behind his back, then the young men would ask the wise men whether the bird was alive or dead, if the wise men said the bird was alive, the young man would strangle the bird and kill it, but if they said the bird was dead, then the young man would produce the bird alive. He ordered the young men to kill all the wise men who failed the test for misleading the kingdom of their intelligence. Most of the wise men were killed until it was the turn of the oldest of them. When the young men confronted him, the wise old man looked at the one who was holding the bird and said, ‘my son, the life of the bird lies in your hands.’ The old man was crowned the thing-tank of the kingdom much to the chagrin of the king.



The world is slowly shrinking from global worming, yet we are saying so much and doing so little to help the situation. The ice caps of the world are melting away leading to a quick rise in the sea levels and some islands are already submerging as a result. The effects of climate change has hit most of the continents with a vengeance, especially the third world countries that relay almost entirely on rain fed agriculture. As of today, Kenya is staring starvation in the face with a food deficit of close to 5.3 million bags of grain. A press release from the office of the President early in the year read in part, ‘Our national assessment is that 10 million people are food insecure and require emergency support. These people will not be able to meet their minimum food requirements if emergency measures are not taken.’ These figures are replicated in many countries across the world, with some posting even worse readings. The Gods are not to blame for our present woos, we have increased the carbon emissions into the atmosphere almost ten fold over the past ten years, and to the contrary reduced the natural sinks of these harmful gases through the depletion of forest cover by almost the same margin, at best we can be likened to a speeding blind driver with no brakes, which ideally means that he is heading nowhere but may reach faster than he anticipates nevertheless.



While we ponder of ways of saving the world we must be conscious of the fact that we are the biggest threat yet to nature. Like the President of America Barrack once said, change begins with you and I. We must all take bold steps of saving Mother Nature in our own ways before we stretch our arms to point a finger, a little like they say goes a long way. Let us save our water towers and safeguard them from encroachments, increase the world forest cover by planting trees, and reduce all forms of environmental pollution to the level that we can because if we don’t, very soon we may just join the now extinct celebrated creatures like the dinosaurs. Where we are standing, our lives are really in our hands.

LOVE STRUCK AND HURT

For a moment she got his heart pounding with joy, the all elusive love had found him at last. He could see it all; the curdling, the giggling, the long unwinding tales of their reach past, of their present excitement, of their future anxiety.It felt good. In his eyes he could see two people standing in the horizon, the sun tied and setting. He could hear them sing too, the rich immortal song of Shania Twain 'looks like we made it look how far we've come my baibe, it might have took the long way but we knew we'd get their some day... ' But then it occurred to him that this could be a dream. All but a dream. He shut his eyes, even added his two hands to close his face so he would not let Janet Andrew go. What he did not know, while he was doing all this he had lost the sleep along with the sweet dream. it was a new dawn without his love, had he been love struck and hurt? today he keeps his eyes open hoping, hoping against hope that his Janet will not pass while he is asleep.

H1N1 VIRUS A REALITY WE HAVE TO CONTEND WITH

Please let us just check if we have all the facts right.
Did you know?
• WHO has declared H1N1 a pandemic due to its quick spread
• A quarter of a million infection cases have been laboratory confirmed worldwide.
• According to WHO, H1N1 has killed 2837 people world over
• The drug used by most countries to treat H1N1 is Anti-flu medicine oseltamivir
• If infection is reported on time the chances of recovery is almost one
H1N1 virus is a pretty new disease in the face of the earth, and since the fast case of the disease was reported, it has since spread like a raging inferno in a dry land. To tame the spread of the airborne catastrophe many a nation reacted by heightening their security alerts at all entry points especially to people from regions that were considered black sports for the disease. My country was not left behind in this reflex response, but when the ministry of health reaffirmed to the citizens that enough measures had been put in place to ensure water tight sealing against the entry of the disease in the country, I comfortably sunk in my sit with consolation that at least S1H1 was a problem for another day. The next news I had was that the fast diagnosis of the disease in Kenya had just been made in my town, precisely one kilometer from my house. Actually if you were coming to my home town you would have to connect on another plane from the capital city. The easy spread and the asymptomatic first infection stages of the disease has put to tusk even the most developed economies of the world. The disease has already been reported in close to 168 countries and the spread is yet to be impeded. Even the United States is caught with its hands tied behind as millions of children resume studies from the spring vacation which could just be a dry bush for the threatening inferno.
Why has the disease coursed a lot of hype yet it is not as deadly as some of the lesser know infections? H1N1 virus spreads by air and a simple careless sneeze is enough to send everyone within the vicinity to the quarantine zone. With the new studies by researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science suggesting that the virus may damage the brain and course long term infections like Alzheimer and Parkinson’s disease after recovery, the world is yet to hit the height of fear in so far as this new infection is concerned. As many countries around the world remain trapped in the amnesia that H1N1 is a disease for their neighbors and continue to slap travel ban on perceived infection prone countries, maybe it is high time we owned up to the reality that no one is immune to this infection irrespective of their geographical location, and reverted to the prevention mode. Even the Nobel peace laureate and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias was puzzled after contracting the disease and remarked, ‘The pandemic makes no distinctions, I am one more case in this country and I am being submitted for the recommendations that the health authorities have established for the whole country’ At best you and I can do the world a favor by watching our hygiene and seeking prompt medication in case of any suspicious flu, cold or fever

THE WAR ON TERRORISM WILL BE WON BY PEN AND PAPER NOT GUNS

Let us give credit where it is due, the world leaders have made tremendous efforts in fighting terrorism from the face of the earth. Year after year colossal amount of money is spent on this holy course so that you and I can live in a safer world where we not only have our democratic space but we can also enjoy life knowing that a suicide boomer will not explode besides us when we go window shopping or to watch Arsenal match against Liverpool at Emirates. Last year alone Billions of dollars were used to fund the fight against terror groups in the Middle East. This war has been sustained for decades yet the world is yet to take stalk of success in the fights if any, which is why I wonder, could there be a better way out of this maze?

When a cancer infection degenerates to the level of metastases a prudent doctor would not recommend surgical removal of the cancerous organ(s). Terrorism has spread in some parts of Middle East so much that some people are victims even without knowing it, to them they are in a holy fight for Allah and anybody that is opposed to their believes is as good as dead. This is especially worse for the children who grow cut off from the rest of the world; all they see and know are fire arms, deaths of their loved ones and wanton destruction of property. These children are born and bred in violence and as a result, they grow with a lot of inbuilt anger and hate that they attach very little value to the sanctity of life. The only informal education within their reach is the Madras as which are offered within the Islamic religion, and because the masterminds of terrorism have carefully veiled their ill practices with Islam, these young minds in most cases are not able to resolve the boundary between terrorism and their religion. The young generation grow so disenchanted with our fight against their perceived believes to the extent that they are ready to bear Atomic explosives in their belly just to kill one or two of us. So as the world continue to cut the tree of terrorism from the top, thousands of seedlings sprout on the ground right before our very eyes, and the more we cover ground in combating terrorism, the more we incubate these seeds of discord, hate and prejudice.

The United States of America has pledged to withdraw its troops from Iraq by 2012, not because the war on terrorism is won, but because a win on the fight is not for us to decide. You can take a cow to the river, but you sure cannot force the cow to drink. We as the world should channel all the hefty resources that are used to fund war on terrorism to opening up the Middle East and bringing it closer to the rest of the world. We should ensure that a good chunk of the allocations go to building institutions, especially those of learning so that every child born of a Middle East woman has a free access to basic education because truth be said, most people that are engulfed in terrorism are held captive by their past, and only education will set them free.

THE VILIFIED HERO OF PORT VICTORIA {UNFOLDING SERIES}

It’s an unnatural phenomenon, even a rarity that a living creature would
defy the checks and balances of nature where survival is for the
fittest and in a case of over refinement even the strongest are sent to
the gutter, the Nile perch of the Nile is one such rarities. Even the
probing hands of the scavenging fishmongers that codon the shores of the
lake is just but a pinch of salt compared to the fish of prays rate of
breeding and the ragging havoc it continues to bear on the biodiversity
of the other fish species. So stories are told of the gone by days when
various fish delicacies adorned the palate of many a fishing communities
around the lake but not anymore. However not for long, salvation it
seems has come from a very unlikely of quarters, the learned brothers
and the unlearned are all lumped in a bowl of ignorance. What’s more,
the uninvited and unwelcomed guest seems to stomach a grand solution for
even problems that has caught the East African Community agape all this
while.
The academic circles have termed it the arsenal that will slay the great
lake to its death bed. When it comes to the water hyacinth in Lake
Victoria, saying that the Nile perch has no natural enemy is an
understatement, at least it is food to countless including you and I, we
just need to step our game up. The sea weed literally roams the east
African boundaries at leisure and pleasure. Today when you visit the
lake and you are able to see the water you probably woke on the right
side of your bed. The government and the fishermen curse the sea weed in
one breath; navigation in the lake is no longer a stroll in the park,
lest you be held captive by the pirates not even keen on a negotiation.
But perhaps we are perceiving the Lake Victoria problem with our minds
so tucked in our stomachs that we are oblivious of the obvious goodies
that the raging weed come with. As we continue to curse and persecute
the water hyacinth, the prophetic wise men of our age are already
spinning ropes of.........
CATCH THE UNFOLDING SERIES).......