Lamu County plans to upgrade slums

A section of Lamu island seafront.PHOTO BY: MAARUFU MOHAMED.

LAMU COUNTY: The county government will soon start upgrading Lamu Island slums. The slums to be upgraded include Kashmir, Bombay and Langoni.

Lamu County Executive Member in charge of Land, Physical Planning, Infrastructure, Urban Planning, Water and Natural Resources Amina Rashid told Home & Away that they are currently gathering data for the project.

The data will include the number of households to be affected.

“After data collection, we will develop a concept paper and a proposal to determine how much it will cost,” she added.

The county is also planning to buy fire extinguishers. Lack of fire equipment saw locals hold a demonstration early this year.

Proper planning of the town, which is the headquarters of Lamu County, will also help in acquiring offices for 700 workers.

The County Governor Issa Timamy currently operates from his rental house that doubles up as an office. “For a long time, we have been lacking office space, in addition to having poor infrastructure but currently, we are renovating a county office at Mokowe where the headquarters will be based,” said County Secretary Siyat Osman.

Lamu’s total budget stands at Sh1.749 billion, with most of it coming from the national government.

The county collected a paltry Sh22 million in the last financial year (2014/2015), but is targeting Sh65 million in the 2015/2016 financial year.

From the budget, only Sh500 million goes to development, while the rest (Sh1.2 billion) caters for recurrent expenditure.

“Our revenue streams are still very few; we don’t have any single factory and rely on the funds given to us by the national government,” said Timamy.