Devolved units are now pushing for the reinstatement of the 15 per cent allocation to them from the Road Maintenance Levy Fund.
At the onset of devolution, the national government was allocating part of the levy fund to counties but the move has since been reversed.
Uasin Gishu Roads County Executive Eng Joseph Lagat notes that currently, the counties receive nothing from the fund, yet they maintain a majority of the roads in the country.
“We don’t get sufficient funds for the maintenance of roads,” Eng Lagat said on Wednesday.
“Most of the money is retained by the national government, especially the Road Maintenance Levy Fund yet counties have the biggest share of the road – counties maintain the biggest network of roads,” he added.
The Road Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF) is collected at the fuel pump part of which is allocated to the annuity fund while the balance is used for road maintenance, rehabilitation and development.
Poor management of the Road Maintenance Levy Fund
Management of the fund is under the Kenya Roads Board (KRB).
Eng Lagat says the fund usually goes to the Kenya Urban Roads Authority, Kenya National Highway Authority and Kenya Rural Roads Authority among others, with the counties left out.
He now wants the decision to remove the 15 per cent allocation to counties from the funds rescinded.
“The way they appropriate the money for roads is very terrible. They allocate money to good roads when there are roads, especially in rural areas require maintenance,” noted the Uasin Gishu County Executive.
“If there’s one thing holding back road maintenance is the management of the Road Maintenance Levy Fund,” he added.
Meanwhile, Eng Lagat says they are targeting to grade at least 1,200 kilometres of roads in the current financial year and murram at least 600 kilometres.
This will be an improvement from over 800 kilometres graded last year.
“We have 3,500kms of county roads and we want to grade 1,200 of those – most of them are in good condition,” said the roads CECM.
