Give counties piece of their cake

Many coastal towns are famous as global tourist areas with amazing natural beauty, which including the ocean and the unspoilt sunny sandy beaches, which has attracted millions of visitors to its shores.

The irony is that many coastal towns still lag behind in development despite contributing billions of dollars to the national revenue.

There should be a clear-cut sharing of tourism resources at the Coast so that the local people can also benefit from local resources. Narok County successfully argued to have a share of the gate fees raised at Maasai Mara National Park.

Despite corruption hiccups, Narok was still able to improve standards in the area by using the extra income to build infrastructure such as schools, which were non-existent in some areas. They are also able to have a say on how local resources are managed for the benefit of the residents first.

This is the same scheme that is needed at the Coast and other tourist areas in the country to help counties to have supplementary income to complement the meagre and unreliable funding from the central government.

Many counties in Kenya are still unable to raise 100 per cent revenue from taxation. This is partly due to lack of revenue-generating industries, sparse and poor population and general under-development from the colonial days.

However, in the recent past, areas such as Turkana have been able to unearth wealth through the discovery of oil in the region.

Sadly, the operations of the project are still largely shrouded in secrecy and the benefactors also being shadowy figures.

If ever a county needed half the share of its natural resources, then that county is Turkana. As one of the poorest places in Kenya and constantly battling drought and famine, it is an area that needs special attention.

The resources to build and create wealth in Turkana are already there. What is needed is the sharing of those resources with the locals and, obviously, protection of the same from corrupt individuals. It was disheartening to read that the previous county officials bled the coffers at Lodwar dry.

However, this should not be the excuse to deny local people the chance to thrive and catch up with the rest of the country. The problem is not only corruption but lack of willingness to end it.

The wish by Mombasa to share the revenue from the port was supported by none other than President William Ruto.

The National Treasury cabinet secretary, Prof Njuguna Ndung'u has put the brakes on the possibility of Mombasa benefitting from the revenues at the port, citing the law as barrier to that.

If a law is unjust, unfair and keeping the people in perpetual state of poverty, then it is not worth having.

Reliance on the law is, at times, an indicator of lack of creativity on the part of the government. It is also an indicator of deliberate pooling of resources in the national coffers for an easy steal by corrupt people.

I don’t think the government could convincingly say that most of the revenue collected from the counties’ resources was properly accounted for or free from corruption, given the high level of graft in the country.

Saying it is illegal to share local resources with local people and then hand the proceeds to corrupt people is the gravest injustice on Kenyans. In that regard, it is, perhaps, time we reviewed laws that hinder local residents from having a share of revenue from resources right outside their doorstep.

A compromise on how the local revenue can be shared with the county governments ought to be reached to give local people a stake in their resources.

Sharing of revenue from local resources will give the residents the opportunity to decide their fate through the principle of public participation.

It would be foolhardy to think that corruption won’t hamper resources at the local level, but this is a bridge that can only be crossed once we get serious about ending graft in the country.

Sharing of revenue from homegrown resources with the local people and economy will develop an area faster than the long-drawn out budgetary system, which is mostly imbalanced, politically influenced and affected by too much red tape from the top down.

It is, therefore, important to review the law on sharing of local resources as demanded by counties. That is one way of instilling pride in the local communities and also creation of wealth.

The current model, whereby one county is allowed a share of local revenues while the others are denied the same opportunity is unfair. We are no longer a dictatorship, and a workable compromise can be reached on the sharing of revenue from local resources.

- Ms Guyo is a legal researcher. [email protected]. @kdiguyo