Adoption of community contracting promises effective implementation of county-funded projects in Baringo County

set out in the Bills of quantities, the design drawing and general building codes.

This contributed to improved access to clean, safe and adequate Water among over 40 Households in Sabor location, Marigat Ward, including Sabor Secondary School, Sabor Primary School and Sabor Dispensary. As at end of the intervention, over 10 households had initiated small scale irrigation projects for growing vegetables and fruits thus improving food and or nutritional security in the location as well as household incomes.

Introduction of the devolved system of Governance in Kenya upon promulgation of the Constitution in 2010 was received with a great deal of enthusiasm by Kenyans. The system portended a break from a past that was riddled by bad governance practices and promised a future where Kenyans would be at the centreA of development programming and service delivery. The dream for equitable development, accountable governance, responsive and quality services suddenly seemed to be within reach. The lingering question thirteen years late is: is the country on track towards realization of the Devolution dream?

Since the advent of devolution, both citizens and the county government of Baringo have prioritised water and health care in county planning and budgeting processes. However, the citizens’ service delivery aspirations have hardly been fully realised due to slow implementation of the budgets, low accountability and other systemic issues. For instance, numbers from the KNBS and other research institutions show that access to water and healthcare among the residents of Baringo remains relatively low.

To redress this state of affairs, stakeholders including Civil Society Organizations have initiated various interventions to promote citizen participation and oversight including feedback sharing on implementation of public projects and service delivery.

Between, March and October 2022, Baringo Civil Society Organizations Forum (BACSOF) in partnership with the County Government of Baringo implemented a project dubbed, Community Contracting for effective service delivery in Health and Water Sectors in Baringo County through support from Act! and funding from FCDO. The project piloted the concept of community contracting as an effective mechanism for citizens to monitor public projects and for improving supervision of the projects by the County government of Baringo.

The specific challenges that the intervention sought to address included Low completion rates of government funded projects, poor quality of projects and Nonoperationalization of complete projects.

Keben Water Project in Marigat Ward and Construction of Ketindui Dispensary in Kabarnet ward, were sampled for the pilot phase.

A total of 8 interrelated activities were conducted, key among these being:

• Project Inception: This involved planning for community contracting, identifying the sample projects as well as mapping the key stakeholders and their responsibilities. The climax of the inception phase was the community entry meetings where the community commissioned the Project Implementation and Management Committees to spearhead the participatory monitoring of the sampled projects. The respective County Government Departments also gave them the requisite project contract documents to inform their monitoring. These included: the bills of quantities , project design drawings and the project workplan

• Induction for the Project Implementation and Management Committee (PIMC): The PIMC members were familiarised with the project cycle, quality standards expected of the projects and how to interpret the project bills of quantities and project design drawings BACSOF equipped the PIMC with knowledge of their roles and responsibilities and helped them to set up a Citizen Action WhatsApp Group with representation of all the project stakeholders including government, for continuous information sharing and engagement.

• Continuous monitoring, follow up and documentation by PIMCs: On day-to-day basis, the members of the PIMCs visited the respective projects’ sites to monitor progress. Through the Citizen Action WhatsApp Groups, the PIMC shared photos of the projects at each critical stage (foundation, lintel, roofing etc.) The relevant county technical officers also used the WhatsApp Groups to enlighten the PIMC members on what to look out for in the project works, for quality implementation. BACSOF animated discussions towards finding viable solutions to emerging issues.

• Mid-term community project reviews: As the project progressed, the stakeholders convened to discuss the progress of the project. They deliberated on the milestones achieved and the gaps. They jointly identified the actions needed to address the gaps and shared responsibilities with clear timelines.

• Joint review and evaluation: At the end of the project, a joint evaluation meeting was conducted. The stakeholders discussed whether the intended outcomes had been met and what remained to be done Proposals for sustaining community contracting were also discussed.

• Documentation of Community Contracting Lessons: Being a pilot intervention, BACSOF supported constant reflections among stakeholders on the value of community contracting and the lessons learnt. This culminated into production of a documentary which is available on: https://youtu.be/tJcuvFADiiw

Notable achievements

A key achievement of the community contracting intervention was timely and successful completion of Keben Water Project. The project was completed by 15th June 2022, which was within the set timelines (Planned Start Date- 25th January 2022 and planned completion date 30th June 2022.) The water project was also implemented as per the quality standards

Students from the two schools no longer go out of school to search for water as the water has been connected to the school compound from Keben Water Project.

Ketindui Dispensary Project was expected to start on 12th April 2022 and end by 28th September 2022. However, there was a delay in commencement of the project for over 2 months. After a long wait, the Project Implementation and Management Committee submitted a complaint letter to the County Secretary and Chief Officer for Health Administration and Planning on 30th June 2022. +In response, the County Government engaged the contractor of the project who explained that he was facing financial challenges and committed to fasttrack it. On 20th July 2022, construction of Ketindui Dispensary commenced. Constant follow up by the PIMC and engagement of all project stakeholders saw to its speedy implementation and to the quality standards set out in the contract documents. By the end of the community contracting intervention, construction of Ketindui Dispensary was at about 90% complete. The project was finally completed in the month of December 2022.

In the course of implementation of the community contracting, three key lessons emerged: (1) Empowerment and meaningful involvement of the beneficiaries of public services in implementation strengthens oversight resulting to timely completion and improved quality of the projects; (2) Collaboration between the government and citizens enhances cost effective monitoring of public services; and (3) Use of digital platforms is cost effective and offers value for money in service delivery monitoring

Looking a head

What should we do to scale up community contracting in Baringo County? The County Government of Baringo should enact a law and relevant policies to entrench the role of Project Implementation and Management Committees towards participatory, efficient and accountable project implementation.

The County Government of Baringo should continually build the capacity of project Implementation and Management Committees.

Partnership between County Government and Civil Society Organisations should be strengthened for capacity building and technical support to Project Implementation and Management Committees in executing their mandate. The County Government of Baringo should institutionalize the community contracting approach to strengthen supervision of implementation of public projects.