The Council of Governors has decried shortage of resources within the devolved units towards the war on Covid-19, raging floods and drought calamities that have continued to haunt Kenyans in various parts of the country.
CoG through its chairman Martin Wambora is now calling on the national treasury to fast-track the release of equitable share of revenue funds to counties to help in service delivery to deserving Kenyans as many parts continue to bear the brunt.
“It is one month to the end of the financial year and county governments are yet to receive their full disbursement of equitable share of revenue. This has continued to derail response measures towards pandemic, drought and floods in various parts of the country,” said Wambora.
The governor’s council, says national treasury has so far disbursed a total of Ksh 8.8 billion to county governments with the current outstanding amount owed to county governments being Ksh 82 Billion.
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According to latest CoG data, Nairobi City County owes Ksh 3.9 billion as arrears for Month of February.
A total of Ksh 25 billion is owed to the 47 counties for the month of March, Ksh 28 billion owed to 47 counties for month of April and Ksh 25 billion owed to the counties for month of May.
Speaking in Mombasa, Wambora stated that sections of populations continue to suffer from great havoc caused by the ongoing floods while the treasury has delayed the release of funds to cushion vulnerable Kenyans.
“Some counties like Nairobi, Machakos, Kajiado, Siaya, Kiambu, Kisumu, Migori and Tanariver are the most affected by the said calamities. This has led to displacement of people in these areas and disruption of livelihoods,”Wambora said.
And as parts of the country stare at severe drought, the council is now calling on the Ministry of Devolution and ASAL as well as development partners to support counties to ensure provision of timely humanitarian assistance and required drought response in order to save lives and livelihoods.
“In view of the impending drought in some parts of the country, some ASAL counties like Marsabit, Turkana, Wajir and Mandera have distributed 230,000 bags of food items. In addition they have carried out water trucking in 435 sites targeting 790,000 households of the affected population,” stated Wambora.
And in the wake of the Indian variant reports in some parts of the country,the governors mentioned the challenges of lack of testing materials therefore compromising the response measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.
“We call upon the Ministry of Health to expedite provisions of testing kits and increase testing centers to ensure proper documentation of magnitude and spread of the disease, this will enable counties to respond on the covid-19 matters,” said Wambora.
Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho said the county is experiencing a decline in Covid-19 cases adding that some of the isolation centers have been closed due to lack of patients.
Joho however urges Kenyans not to drop the guard in the war against the pandemic that has taken a toll on many Kenyans.
The duo made the statements during a joint media briefing on the counties preparedness in the war against the spread of covid-19 held outside governor Joho’s office.
Data released by CoG shows that the bed capacity in the country stands at 7,792.
This number has increased by 171 as a result of patients who have recovered from Covid-19 infections bringing the total number of available beds to 7963 by last week.
The intensive care units ICU beds the total number of ICU beds in the counties stood at 342 while High Dependency Unit HDU beds stood at 151 in all the facilities.
Cumulatively in the 47 counties,a total of 933,826 doses have been administered.
Health care workers leading by 162,475 vaccinated, security personnel at 79,376, Teachers 146,830 above 58 years 284,681 and 261,700 being in the other category.
