Construction of county offices postponed

By Robert Nyasato

The construction of county offices has been put on hold until after the General Election.

Government Chief Quantity Surveyor Araka Nyakiongora said plans to construct county offices, including the county assemblies and governors’ residences for the 47 counties, were suspended after constitutional issues were raised.

Speaking in Kisii, Nyakiongora said the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC) raised the red flag, saying building the structures contravened the law.

According to the Constitution, if the national Government undertook any projects or tasks on behalf of the counties, there must be prior consultation between the two governments.

“The CIC wrote to the Ministry of Public Works questioning how we could construct the county offices without consultations forcing us to suspend the project midway,” Nyakiongora said.

The Charles Nyachae-led commission informed the ministry that it had no mandate to undertake the construction for the county governments without their authority.

This means the construction can only commence once the county governments have been constituted, probably after March 4, 2013.

Nyakiongora expressed concern that this would see some counties lack offices to transact business once they are constituted after the polls, a scenario that would not augur well with the devolved governments.

No facilities

“Some counties have completely no facilities in place to start with but others can borrow offices from local authorities,” he said.

The lucky ones are counties in former eight provincial headquarters that can re-design the offices to house the devolved governments.

“The county assemblies were to take the design of Parliament,” said Nyakiongora.

He said the ministry was ready to embark on the county project two years ago after they went round assessing the existing facilities and making appropriate designs.

About stalled projects, the Nyakiongora said out of the 215 projects that had stalled for over 20 years since 1989, 200 have, so far, been completed.

The remaining 15 stalled projects will be completed in the next three years at a cost of Sh8 billion, he revealed.

He, however, regretted that during the evaluation and allocation of funds for stalled projects, universities were not factored yet they had many unfinished works.

“We need about Sh10 billion to complete abandoned university projects,” Nyakiongora said.