By Helen Atieno
Siaya County has been urged to honour the agreement it signed with the State Department for Devolution in May 2024 on the participation and implementation of the Kenya Devolution Support Program.
During a Monitoring and Evaluation exercise by the State Department for Devolution today, which seeks to assess the county’s performance and progress of the mid term review of the program implementation, a number of challenges were identified.
The two most crucial challenges included late transfer of funds from the County Revenue Funds Account to KDSP II Special Purpose Account contravening the set 14 days and lack of co- funding for level I Institution Grant, a situation which Miss Peris Nyawira, the National Program Coordinating Unit M&E Officer said has severe repercussion of eliminating the county from those that are to receive funding from the grant.
The exercise according to Mr. John Mokomoni, the State Department for Devolution team lead, aims at coming up with interventions to challenges affecting the implementation of the program while riding on the best practices, innovations and emerging issues. This would lead to introducing strategies for maximizing achievements in the remaining half of the lifespan of the program. The counties through the M&E exercise, get assisted to seal the existing gaps that bar them from accessing the maximum Ksh. 352.5 million additional revenues for investment projects.
Mr. Mokomoni added that the level 1 institutional strengthening focuses on activities that are learning point in running the counties if adopted for service delivery in the devolved system of governance going forward.
Some of the key areas in level 1 institutional strengthening are; Increasing Own Source revenue, reducing stock of pending bills, human resource management issues (like onboarding all county workers on the HRIS system, consistency in HR records) and performance management.
Siaya was lauded for well streamlined performance management contracts and harmonious transfer of the defunct Local Authority staff as it was the first county out of the 47 which has had such transition successfully. The county executive through the County Program Implementation Unit has again been singled out as one of the few counties which has incorporated the county Assembly activities of the program in the workplan.
Mr. Francis Aola who is currently holding brief for the County Program Coordinator, appreciated the State Department for Devolution officers for conducting this activity as it gives the Program Implementation Unit heads up on the crucial areas to be prioritized in the preparation and resource allocation of the program’s financial year 2026/2027 workplan.