Key actions

a special arrangement for managing specific county assets either by county entities like Kakamega Water and Sanitation Company or by private entities like private minibuses serving public transport.

Construction of all buildings is done by the public works, transportation, or energy departments. However, entities of ministries kept managing many assets that ought to have been handed over to devolved local governments. The county staff and entities did not pay much attention to assets unrelated to devolved service functions such as land; this has caused substantial financial and material damages, still unmeasured to date.

Asset takeover by the power of law, 2017

Gazette Notice no. 858 (Notice 858, 2017) transferred the assets and liabilities of the defunct local authorities by the power of the law and set a framework for validation, verification, and valuation of the assets by the counties. The gazette notice also ruled to create County Asset and Liability Committees (CALCs) whose function was the identification, verification, and validation of the assets and liabilities of the defunct local authorities as of March 27, 2013. The work was conducted under the policy and leadership direction of the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee (IGRTC). CALC appointed field verification teams by main asset classes such as land, buildings, equipment, vehicles, furniture, and accessories and used the unaudited list of assets from the TA (IGRTC 2017).

Further, Notice no. 2701 (Notice 2701, 2017) extended the deadline for completion of the exercise from March 31, 2017, to July 31, 2017. Box 8.2 explains key actions conducted to verify and validate assets and liabilities in Kakamega County under CALC. IGRTC and the TA records handed over to counties in 2017

BOX 8.2

Kakamega County assets and liabilities validation excerpts: Key actions

The purpose of the exercise was to identify, verify, validate, and transfer the assets and liabilities of defunct local authorities to respective county governments. The following data collection strategies to collect both primary and secondary data were used:

Interviews. These were conducted with key informants and officers at the county headquarters and subcounties and others who had previously worked in the defunct local authorities including treasurers and clerks.

Document review. The team examined primary supporting documents like title deeds, logbooks, assets registers, valuation reports, certificates, and other related records. Secondary data was collected through valuation reports, auditor-general reports, handover and takeover reports, lands registry records, adjudication registers, preliminary index maps, registry index maps, bank statements, financial statements, and reviews of reports of the Local Authorities Integrated Financial Operations Management System [LAIFOMS].

Physical inspection [and/or] verification of assets through site visits. Public participation. Additional data were collected from the public, members of which submitted written memoranda following public notices in both print and electronic media sent to churches and public gatherings requesting for information on assets and liabilities of defunct local authorities.

Data was analyzed using the narrative method and presented using thematic analysis and photographic evidence.

Source: Kakamega CALC 2017.