Laikipia residents urge CRA to increase budgetary allocation to county

Nanyuki

Thursday, November 2,2023

KNA by Muturi Mwangi

The Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA)has been urged to increase county revenue allocation for Laikipia county from the current Sh 5.3 billion to Sh 10 billion in a bid to boost service delivery for residents.

Laikipia Deputy Governor (DG) Rueben Kamuri speaking at a Nanyuki hotel during a public participation exercise for the Financial Year 2024/2025 budget and Medium-Term Expenditure Framework said that the current allocation was not sufficient and didn’t reflect the county’s populations’ needs.

“The allocation is less for our budget and the National government has money but we have to align our needs by pulling resources together without conflict. And for us to be allocated more resources, population is important among other parameters,” said Kamuri.

The Deputy Governor argued that despite Laikipia being classified as Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), it receives less funds from the Treasury coffers compared to other ASALs counties like Turkana and Samburu, with Turkana getting an allocation of over Sh13 billion.

Kamuri pointed out that Laikipia was disadvantaged since some residents and especially from the Northern side were pastoralists and when population data collection was being carried out, they had moved to other areas in search of pasture for their livestock.

“When the census exercise was being conducted, pastoralists had migrated to other places and our population went down. Our population figure when it comes to allocation is therefore not around 592,000 but much higher and therefore, we need another matrix to determine funds allocation to the county,’ noted the deputy governor.

Kamuri said that to ensure the county got Sh10 billion revenue allocation, the national treasury needs to use other parameters besides population and at the same time decried the fact that county revenue allocation had been constant for a long period without an increase.

The deputy governor noted that they had pushed for equitable revenue share to be increased from Sh380 million to Sh407 million but only received an additional Sh 100 million which, he observed, the county was capable of collecting from its own source revenue with ease.

“The current budgetary allocation of Laikipia is Sh5.3 billion and this is where the bone of contention. If we have enough funds, we will be able to address all our issues. We were appealing for Sh407million equitable revenue share million but we didn’t get there and we were only allocated Sh100 million,” explained Kamuri.

Laikipia East Deputy Commissioner Patrick Muli called for the views collected from residents for the Financial Year 2024/2025 national budget and Medium-Term Expenditure Framework to be incorporated since the county reflected the face of Kenya with its ethnic diversity.

National Treasury Budget Deputy Director Isaiah Ochere said that the public participation on the budget held yesterday in the county was the first since the advent of the 2010 constitution, revealing that the exercise had hitherto been limited only to Nairobi County.

“We have been conducting public participation but only in Nairobi. However, we realised the need to go to each county to get views from residents about their priorities needed in the budget,” said Ochere.

Ochere said that the public participation on the national budget offered residents an opportunity to highlight their priority needs for 2024 to 2025 financial year.

On his part, James Kimiri, a resident said that their priorities were water and appealed for sinking of new dams and desiltation of the already existing dams.

Other concerns raised by a section of the over 200 residents who were sensitized on the budget making process included improvement of health, security, human wildlife conflict victims’ compensation and Nanyuki-Rumuruti road construction.

Courtesy; KNA