President William Ruto reiterated Wednesday that his administration is only eager to work in partnership with counties to deliver services to Kenyans.
Speaking while officially opening the Devolution Conference being held in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu county, the head of state assured the governors that he will not interfere with their functions but instead offer much-needed support, especially in sectors that have a huge impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.
“My friends, governors, I am asking you to work with the national government. We have no intention. In this national administration, you have a partner and a friend, we have no intention whatsoever to take over any county function,” he said
According to the President, all his administration wants “is to support the county governments for them to achieve their mandates and we will support to the extent that you want us to support you,”
He challenged the governors to embrace partnership with the national government but clarified that this doesn’t amount to them ceding their authority.
“We do not want to take over any function. We want to help (counties) because the success of every county is the success of Kenya. We do not have citizens that belong to the national government, we have only one citizen those who elected you are the same ones who elected the national government,” he said
He said issues such as healthcare can be jointly handled by both levels of government if the dream to realize Universal Healthcare Coverage (UCH), must come to fruition.
“We want to work with you. For instance, we have already agreed on a formula where we will co-fund the 100,000 community health promoters. We are going to equip them as national government. We are going to work together to make sure that delivery of health products, services is efficient and reaches the last mile and counties are best placed to do that,” said the President
He further indicated that his administration was keen to work alongside counties to develop markets across the country
“We need to work together on markets. As you have seen markers are run by counties but as you also know in my campaign Mama Mboga is front and center and I cannot walk away from them. So, I have to build these markets and we intend to build 400 markets across Kenya, maybe 500. We are going to spend Ksh 20 billion. The markets will be handed over to counties to run them,” he said
