Mombasa,KENYA: Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho has proposed the creation of a third government structure.
According to Joho, the third tier government will enhance service delivery to Kenyans.
Joho said the third tier government should be allocated 30 percent of total budget while National government and county government remains with 55 percent and 15 percent respectively.
Speaking in Mombasa during a sitting by the building bridges initiative task force (BBI), he also denied assumptions that his proposal is meant to create positions for certain individuals in the country.
“Create another government with specific functions.People think we need this positions to benefit some people but that is not so”, he said.
Joho also defended the existence of county government saying they have transformed the country.
” Today you can question me as your governor. Mnakuja mnasema mnataka hii, mntaka ile…..Kama hakungekuwa na ugatuzi, mngeniuliza nini… ‘, he posed.
Kenya currently has two tiers of government; National and County governments.
Reduce number of Counties to ten
Meanwhile a section of human rights groups in Mombasa led by Haki Afrika wants the number of Counties reduced to 10 and constituencies to at least 150.
Executive Director of Hussein Khalid said the current format is a burden to Kenyans.
“We support devolution and it has brought a lot of change, but we are of the opinion for the counties to be reduced to ten. We only need ten governors because mwananchi cannot sustain the current 47 bosses, its way too much”, said Khalid.
Rashid Suleiman a resident from Ganjoni cited lack of integrity, transparency and accountability as factors leading to the country lagging behind in terms of development.
“If we could put all the issues into those three bucket, we could be far as a country,” said Rashid.
However the BBI team was faulted by lack of youth representation. This was raised by Nicholas Songora, a youth from Likoni.
“How can we build bridges if youths are not represented in the task force? Around 75 percent of the country’s population is youths. Who is going to present our issues if we are not included”, he posed .
Additional reporting by Oscar Nyoha
