RAILA ODINGA LAUNCHES BBI AGAIN

ODM leader Raila Odinga yesterday re-awakened the ghosts of some of the proposals in Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) that sought to devolve more resources to the 47 county governments.

The push for constitutional amendments through BBI, which has been declared by the courts as illegal had proposed an increase of county allocations from the current 15 per cent to 35 per cent.

He told delegates at the 7th Annual Devolution Conference in Wote, Makueni County that devolution which has had powerful and vicious opponents, must be strengthened and more resources devolved to the counties.

“We must overcome the challenge of insufficient allocation and delays in disbursement of funds by the National Treasury to counties. On this too, there should be no debate,” said Raila, adding that the country must be bold enough to abandon institutions and ideas that are not working and come up with new ones.

Governors have on numerous occasions termed as illegal the action by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani to withhold devolved funds and later fault them for slow absorption of the same.

In a thinly veiled attack at Yatani over his attempt to seize control of more than Sh60 billion pension fund for county workers, Raila said the problem of overlapping and duplication of functions by state agencies will also have to be addressed.

Courtesy People Daily