By Andanje Wakhungu
Kakamega County Women Rep Elsie Muhanda has called on the county government to introduce a fund that will enable the county assembly members to initiate development in their areas of representation. She passionately defended members of the county assembly against backlash from the public over alleged incompetency and the lack to initiate development projects in their Wards adding that it’s because they have no kitty for such programmes.
She was speaking in Malava Sub County during the Mugai Shirugu Ward MCA Peter Wanami’s thanksgiving ceremony, she asked the public to be considerate of their ward leaders and not to over-expect much from them as their hands tied financially. MCAs can only initiate programmes being funded by the county government itself.
These MCAs you are seeing here are stressed especially from you people who need good roads, water, and various infrastructure projects with no kitty to implement those projects. Residents should support them to be allocated some kitty where they will be able to control and be able to implement some of these programmes you are requesting, for now, they are at the mercy of governors where they have to be loyal to be able to be considered for a certain project in their Wards, unlike an MP who has the Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) while Women MPs control the National Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF) from where we fund certain pressing projects within our areas of jurisdiction”.
She said with MCAs having a fixed rate allocation they will be able to appease the electorates through programmes and hence be reelected. This she said after noticing that most of the MCAs could only be serving one term as the electorate’s development scorecard was wanting with many having done hardly anything and been dodging the public now and then.
At the same time, she called on the county to also consider providing security to the MCAs after it became evident that most of them were prone to attacks from some angry public and even political rivals as was the case with the stabbing later demise of Kisa West MCA an incident which has since been linked to his fallout with area MP.
On education, she hailed the efforts put in place by the MCA (Wanami) and urged the residents to give him another term to streamline the education standards in the Ward. Your MCA is a retired school head who has a passion for education in his heart and it is one of the major agendas in his manifesto so far he has started working on it by looking for well-wishers to support destitute students through fees payment and also improving on school infrastructure and you should give him a chance to do more because even me he has already identified for me two schools which I should assist in putting up water tanks as well as given me one needy boy whom I have put in my programme of needy students and so far the boy will be joining university after scoring very good grades in Kcse and I will continue to support his university education fully. MCA Peter Wanami assured the locals that he was ready to work for them and should be considered for re-election come 2027 against the ward trend of only electing their ward leader on a one-term basis.
“I know your expectations are many but kindly ear with us as we are about to pass our budget that will saw allocations being released for development and we hope that with the promise of the governor promise to give us Ksh.20 million ward development fund and an increase of ward fund from Ksh. 2Million to Ksh.4Million, we will deliver to your aspirations, we just want to call for your patience as we are aware of your demands and expectations.”
