Transition Authority could lower urban grading threshold

By JUMA KWAYERA

The agency mandated to oversee implementation of devolution wants the threshold for marking out urban areas lowered to help disperse further the functions of government.

The changes they suggest would create six new cities in addition to the three on the books.

However, the Transition Authority’s push has placed it at loggerheads with county governors who accuse it of “jumping the gun” before key issues are dispensed with.

The Urban Areas and Cities Act benchmarks cities at resident populations of above 500,000 people. Only Nairobi and Mombasa meet the mark. By law, municipalities must have over 250,000 people and above while towns have upwards of 150,000 residents.

The Transition Authority proposes the amendment of the law to make it easier for more areas to acquire and maintain their statuses. They say the stringent requirement to run key functions without the support of the national government would mean Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu do not qualify to be cities.

The population threshold provided in the Act is considerably higher than the one recommended by a Task Force on Devolved Government set up former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government Musalia Mudavadi, which was 250,000 and above for cities, 75,000-249,999 for municipalities and 10,000 - 74,999 for townships.

If the threshold were to be lowered to, say, 200,000 resident population, six more urban areas would climb up the ladder to city. These are Nakuru with 307,990 residents, Eldoret with 289,380, Ruiru (238,585), Kikuyu (233,231), Kagundo-Tala (218,557) and Malindi (207,253). At the opposite end, a town like Wajir, which has an international airport, is unclassified. Mwatate, Malava, Githunguri, Lungalunga, Kaloleni, Naromoru and Maseno among others, would be upgraded to township status. The resident populations in these urban areas are above 20,000, hence in need of basic services.

Resort city

An amended law would also pave the way for upgrading Isiolo to resort city status as envisaged in Vision 2030, without technical, legal or logistical hitches. Currently, Isiolo is far from municipality status with a resident population of 46,126.

The chairman of the Council of Governors Isaac Ruto agrees that the threshold used to delineate urban areas only served to control their proliferation. However, he says it is too early to embark on changing the law before the transfer of functions to county governments and funding are settled.

“Granted, the threshold was too high,” says Mr Ruto, the Bomet County governor. “There is a need to review it through consultations to bring on board more urban areas. But this is not the right time to do so. The Transition Authority is jumping the gun. The county governments need to start running now, but we have not received any cent to pay services and salaries. We are also not done with transfer of functions,” he says.

Transition Authority chairman Kinuthia Wamwangi says unless the law is changed to co-opt unclassified urban areas, the impact of devolution will not be felt at the grassroots as anticipated in the new Constitution.

“In 2009, the National Bureau of Statistics undertook a census for 215 urban areas,” says Mr Wamwangi.“Based only on the resident population (and current status), the census revealed Kenya has three cities — Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu — two municipalities — Nakuru and Eldoret — 130 townships and 80 unclassified urban areas.”

Unclassified areas

In its present form, the law downgrades 38 former municipal councils to townships, 36 formerly unclassified urban areas would qualify for classification as townships while one former municipal council, Karatina, and one town council, Wote, would be declassified. The classification leaves more than 195 urban areas with less than 10,000 resident population undesignated, an “anomaly” TA is seeking to realign.

The authority’s Head of Research and Policy Analysis Peter Kimemia explained told The Standard on Saturday downgrading and declassification of urban areas poses a major challenge in provision of services as the lower status is an inhibition to investments.

“When urban areas are classified as cities or municipalities, they acquire body corporate status, which means they attract funding from other areas,” he explains.

“Unlike towns, they can access resources even from foreign financial institutions.”

Some positions advertised by county governments could become redundant if the changes in law sought by the Transition Authority get the backing of Parliament. By implication, reclassification of urban areas implies more resources for the counties.

Transition Authority officials argue that many urban areas lack the capacity to run autonomously as anticipated in the law. They say that requiring urban areas to demonstrate economic, functional and financial viability to qualify as a city, municipality or town makes no sense in come areas.

Observes Kimemia: “There are areas in the country that have been marginalised since independence. To use the same threshold to categorise urban areas, would be tantamount to perpetuating the marginalisation. There are political and economic considerations to be looked into when deciding the status of such settlements.”

He further explained that as devolution takes shape, urban settlements will become the economic growth hubs, hence the need to prepare them for the roles ahead. “They will (only) attract investments as long as people are getting services.”

Until implementation of devolution began, urban areas designated as cities, municipalities and townships received funding from the national government under the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF).

“Analysis of past revenue sources revealed that all urban areas and the current three cities received a large amount of their revenue from the central government (now national government) ranging from 16 per cent for Mavoko to 87 per cent for Nyamache during the 2011/12 financial year,” says Wamwangi.

“It is a well-known fact that there were massive leakages in the revenue collection by the defunct local authorities and that there is high potential to collect more revenue. However, until a detailed assessment is undertaken it is difficult to determine the exact potential,” he says.