George Omondi

3 September 2010

The government on Thursday announced a major reorganisation of the provincial administration with the deployment of its officers to the newly created counties - setting the stage for potential conflict between the central government and the devolved units.

Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua said the planned re-organisation of the colonial relic to fit the devolved system of 47 counties under the new Constitution had began in earnest and will be concluded before the stipulated five-year period.

Uncertainty has been building the provincial administration which is not provided for in the new Constitution, leaving provincial commissioners, district commissioners, district officers, chiefs and sub-chiefs guessing over the fate of their jobs.

"The government is immediately making all the possible administrative changes while those that require laws to be changed and enacted will await the conclusion of the parliamentary process," said Dr Mutua in a press briefing.

"The affected personnel will continue to wield the same powers they enjoyed under the old Constitution even as their title change from district or provincial commissioners to county or regional commissioners, "he added.

This means some of the provincial administration personnel as set up under the old constitution - among them, eight provincial commissioners and at least 260 district commissioners - might lose their plum jobs under the new constitutional arrangement, as they outnumber the available positions in the counties.

But analysts have faulted the automatic deployment of the largely discredited provincial administration personnel saying it could perpetuate rot, corruption and inefficiency of the old system.

"A county as envisaged under the present Constitution is a government in itself and its employees must be properly vetted to give communities the confidence of real change," said Tiberius Barasa, a research fellow at the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR).

"Otherwise, the local community may be left with a feeling that all the new constitution entailed was change of names and titles."

Political analysts said the transfer of the senior personnel was likely to spark off power struggles between the two levels of the devolved government.

Under the new constitutional dispensation, the governor is supposed to have his own governance system, complete with a cabinet.

This means if the provincial personnel are deployed within a county as structures of the central government, they will be seen as a parallel government that report directly to Nairobi.

"The extent of this conflict will depend on how the national government decides to handle registration of persons and the maintenance of law and order," argues Dr Adams Oloo, a senior political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi

Under the old constitution, provincial administration has been controlling all major organs associated with security such as police and intelligence.

It remained the central focus for the agitators of constitutional change over the last 10 years, with key politicians linking it to oppressions of yesteryears.

Dr Ekuru Aukot, the director at the Committee of Experts that drafted the new Constitution said in an earlier interview with Business Daily: "The provincial administration will be restructured within five years to fit with the system of devolution and the operations of the county government."

Dr Mutua, however, said most of the current provincial administration personnel will find similar roles under the county structure with positions that fail to fit getting scrapped.

The changes at the provincial levels are expected to affect many departments of government across the country.

For example the police and other agencies will have to reorganise their command structure to fit into the county system, said Dr Mutua.

The new Constitution entrusts the authority to register persons and maintenance of law and order throughout the country in the hands of the central government.

"If these regional commissioners are to be in charge of these tasks, then they must report directly to internal security minister not the governor and this will cause conflict," said Dr Oloo.

The government has also redrawn boundaries to capture counties and a new map with counties will soon be unveiled.

He proposes that the central government should enter into negotiation with governors so that they regional commissioners can report directly to them before they in turn report to the internal security minister.

Dr Mutua said the government has also redrawn the borders of all the 47 counties and that a new map will be unveiled soon.

The Interim Boundaries Commissioner had earlier post-poned the exercise to wait for the release of the national population census - a task which planning minister Wycliffe Oparanya accomplished on Monday this week.