Sleepless Nights as County Heads Seek to Secure Palatial Homes as Deadline Looms

By Virginia Nyambura

Governors, deputy governors and county assembly speakers will no longer qualify for house allowance. The directive by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) is set to be affected the beginning of June 30, 2019.

The SRC’s directive has disrupted business among the County heads driving them to hurriedly purchase land where they can build homes before their housing benefits are withdrawn. The construction projects have had a sumptuous share with some Counties setting aside as much as 100 million shillings.

The house allowance stands at 100,000 shillings for the County heads and 90,000 shillings for their deputies.

The process that will see counties purchase land at their point of choice could be eased by the availability of Government-owned land, which is already frustrated by massive land grabbing in the country, where the county would only be required to change use.

Meru County government has set aside 100 million shillings in the current budget to cater for the housing projects. The County Government plans to construct on plots that are not connected in Milimani. The land, owned by the defunct Meru Municipal Council, is estimated at around three acres. “We have a budget of 60 million shillings for the governor’s house and 40 million shillings for the Deputy Governor’s residence. But we hope we shall deliver at less than this,” said Deputy Governor Titus Ntuchiu adding that they were grateful that the municipal land was present as purchasing land in an upmarket area would have been exorbitant.

Embu county government, despite owning huge tracks of land as it inherited from the defunct local authorities, has not been as lucky as its neighboring county as it has had to look for alternative sites because the pieces of land are located in remote areas. Embu County officials, continue scouting for land in Manyatta constituency for the governor and speaker’s residence to be constructed. The County’s Lands Executive, Josphat Kithumbu, reported that they would only resort to purchasing land if they did not find vacant Government-owned land.

“After I received a circular to find suitable land, I instructed my officers to search for available Government land. We hope we will find space that meets the specifications set by the SRC,” Kithumbu said.

Embu Speaker, Josiah Thiriku, added that they had set aside 50 million shillings for the Governors residence and 25 million shillings for the speaker’s house. “Our first step is to identify suitable land. Once the Lands department does that, construction will begin. The actual project costs would depend on the bill of quantities prepared by the Infrastructure department,” he said.

At Nyeri County, the process of purchasing three acres to construct the Governor’s house stalled following lack of bids forcing officials to re-plan. County residents, however, are of the opinion that there is a number of national government-owned residences that could be renovated and refurbished to be occupied by the County leaders instead of spending such large amounts of the taxpayer’s money.

“We advertised for bids but had to follow procurement procedures when we only got one bidder. A decision was made to hold off on offering the tender for purposes of transparency. I agree that we have public houses in the suburbs of Nyeri town. Unfortunately, the space they occupy is too small and to make matters worse, the land surrounding the houses is in dispute so we cannot acquire it,” said Nyeri’s Infrastructure and Lands Executive, Daniel Kwai, noting that the county was working closely to repossess the public land.

The Nairobi County Government has said that it is now considering renovating former mayor’s residence in Lavington to be occupied by the county’s speaker, Beatrice Elachi.

Majority Leader and member of the County Assembly Public Service Board, Abdi Guyo, argued that the assembly lacked a budget to build a mansion for the speaker as earlier planned
“We are now urging the executive to surrender the former residence of the mayor so we can turn it into the speaker’s residence,” said Guyo.

The property, worth 157 million shillings lies on 0.843 acres of land, was first occupied by George Aladwa who was the last mayor of the Nairobi City Council.

It is probably the speed that the Counties are working in to secure their palatial homes as the deadline looms that is appalling considering the number of undelivered promises and incomplete projects.