Limited cash, staff constrain Kisumu gender offices
Kisumu residents mark International women's Day. Gender offices in the county say limited funds and staff undermine their operations.
What you need to know:
- Since the creation of the national government offices at the county levels in 2017, they have yet to receive adequate funding.
- The county government has also set up its own office and eight others in the sub-counties, all of which are also underfunded.
Kisumu gender offices cannot perform their functions well because of inadequate financial and human resources, an officer has said.
County principal gender officer Joel Okumu, an employee of the national government, said although Kisumu has active offices, a lot more needs to be done to make them efficient and deliver to their best.
He said that since the creation of the national government offices at the county levels in 2017, they have yet to receive adequate funding.
“What we have been receiving is a stipend released to us quarterly and can barely facilitate our activities," said Mr Okumu.
Roll-out headache
He added that the county office is understaffed and has no proper transport system to enable them to roll out services to the sub-counties.
“We also have only two officers serving the entire county; however, with the limited resources, we can hardly serve our clients as expected."
The county government has also set up its own office and eight others in the sub-counties.
County Gender Officer Joel Orude has, however, admitted that just like the national offices, the county has done very little to ensure fair budgetary allocation.
"Currently, we do not have any clear budgetary allocation for our development programmes. This has greatly affected our service delivery," said Mr Orude.
Partnerships
He said the offices largely depend on partners to source funds to keep their programmes running.
"The county understands that the gender issues are spread all over and need resources to run activities smoothly. We are, therefore, appealing for more funds to factor in the gender programmes," he said.
"We do not also have enough trained social workers to render services to the public," added Mr Orude, revealing that the county now plans to create more offices at the ward level.
