Lenku appeals for more funds from Sh5bn corona kitty

Kajiado County Governor Joseph Ole Lenku has faulted treasury’s allocation of only Sh52 million to his country out of a whooping Sh5 billion COVID-19 kitty saying the move erred in assessment of the County needs.

“The allocation of Sh5 billion to counties to support efforts to fight COVID-19 needs an urgent review” said Lenku.

“We have been allocated Sh52 million, yet we now have 92 confirmed cases. Counties that are yet to record a single case have been allocated more than Sh200 million.”

In a statement to press Monday, the governor reiterated that the health indices used by the Commission on revenue allocation (CRA) had ignored some susceptibility of some counties to Covid-19 cases.

The indices are for general health indicators that are not COVID-19 related. They are misrepresenting the correlation between allocation of resources and the needs they are supposed to address.

According to Ministry of Health data, Kajiado at 92 confirmed cases is third most prone County after Nairobi and Mombasa, yet it got a meagre allocation.

The COVID-19 conditional grant schedule signed by CRA Chairperson Jane Kiringai shows Nairobi which is the worst hit county, was allocated Sh294 million while Mombasa (second most affected County) was allocated Sh100 million.

The schedule further reveals that counties such as Kakamega that are yet to report any cases were allocated Sh. 262 million while Kisii was allocated Sh156 million.

Uasin Gishu with less than 50 cases was allocated Sh125 million.
Speaking in Kajiado during a brief on the pandemic’s preparedness in the County, the governor said Kajiado continued to be exposed to the virus due to its porous border with Tanzania.

“In fact, 70 per cent of our cases are related to the Namanga and Oloitokotik borders where majority are truck drivers,” he said.

Lenku said the county’s preparedness was on course and that there were 63 beds in the county’s isolation wards so far and ten ICU beds as well as 10 high dependency unit beds.