Dr. Robert Ayisi, the Acting County Secretary sent out a public notice on 28th August, 2017 informing the members of the public to be part of the formulation of Nairobi County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) 2018 – 2022. The Nairobi County CIDP is a five-year plan which guides the county’s development projects. The County Annual Development Plan (CADP) is drawn from the integrated development plan. That is how serious inter-linked they are.
This is in line with article 220 (a) of the Constitution of Kenya 2010. In that respect, the County of Nairobi is planning to conduct 17 forum at various Sub-Counties of Nairobi. These forums are said to be conducted simultaneously. There is no problem in all this, my problem and many other people’s problem is that the County government is not following the set laws and regulations. Below is a detailed review on what we think is wrong with the planned forum:
a) Nairobi County has violated its own County Public Participation Act 2015 which directs that the public shall have access to information on a timely manner to enable the public participate in a meaningful manner.
b) secondly, the Nairobi County Public Participation Act 2015 demands that any notice to the public to be published in at least 2 daily newspapers with national circulation. The forums convened should be highly publicized to make it possible for members of the public to attend and participate (check section 10(2)).
c) The County Secretary either failed or forgot to form the sector working groups and invite stakeholders to engage on those sector working groups.
d) The County Secretary has not made available the sector working groups reports for review by stakeholders. This is where we are supposed to start from.
e) The County Secretary was supposed to have published a CIDP road map to make it easier for members of the public to engage effectively in the entire process.
f) Giving a 48-hour notice to the members of the public without any documents to review in preparation for the deliberations may lead to low quality contributions.
g) There is no email address provided to enable people share their input electronically. This is unfair and unlawful.
h) The County Secretary has not published the notice on 2 newspapers with national circulation.
i) On 28th August, 2017 the acting County Secretary Dr. Robert Ayisi published a notice for public participation on CIDP formulation on the county website. The notice is as seen below:
The notice intentionally or unintentionally lacks the date it was written. Why is this the case. Is it meant to dispute the date when the notice was distributed? Anyway. We already know it is 28th August, 2017 and today is 30th August, 2017. This is an ambush not a consultation.
This notice for public participation contradicts the guidelines for preparing CIDPs as published by Ministry of Planning and Devolution on June, 2017. The guidelines call for making available to the members of the public a “Performance Analysis.” This is a detailed review on how the various sectors performed, changes realized, challenges faced as well as lessons learnt. This is the analysis that we want to see before we start discussing about the next 5 years development plan.
I understand that there are statutory deadlines on formulation of CIDPs but this should not be used as an excuse to undermine citizen participation in the planning and budgeting process.
Based on the above premise, the non-state actors have called for postponement of the meetings to provided 7-days notice to the public. The county has been requested to make available the reports prepared by the sector working group as well as performance reviews and finally the County Secretary has been directed to publish the CIDP road map as soon as possible.
Let’s see what transpires. In the meantime, share this blog article with you elected Member of County Assembly. Ask him/her to do something to stop this chaos.
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