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Motion on the Distribution of Staff in the Ministry of Agriculture in Nyandarua County By Hon. Kimani Njiraiini
23RDJULY 2014
REPUBLIC OF KENYA
NYANDARUA COUNTYASSEMBLY
1st ASSEMBLY-2nd SESSION
OFFICIAL HANSARD REPORT
Hon. Deputy Speaker on the Chair
9:30 AM
Prayer
Speaker: Next order.
Clerk: Mr. Speaker, we have exhausted the order paper. Nonetheless, we have a supplementary order paperreport to be tabled todayfollowing a request arisingfrom one honourable Samuel Kimani Njiraini during yesterday’s business 22nd July 2014 to move a motion on the adoption of the report on the distribution and the status of the staff in the ministry of agriculture, livestock and fisheries.
Speaker: Member for Kaimbaga, honourable Samuel Kimani Njiraini
Hon. Njiraini: Thank you Mr. Speaker sir, I beg to move a motion on adoption of the report on distribution and status of the staff in the ministry of agriculture, livestock development and fisheries from the same committee Mr. Speaker sir. The committee was tasked to enquire into the matter relating to the status and the distribution of members of staffs in the same department,in Nyandarua County. This was sourced from a motion that was moved by Gachari on Tuesday 2nd July 2014. This committee had a mandate which was derived directly from the standing order 186 IV a,d &g, which is very clear. When compiling this report, it involved all the stakeholders from the department, the committee made decisions and recommendations on this committee report on status and distribution of staff. In the committee, we were eight members and they are well listed. In acknowledgement, I wish like to sincerely, thank the office of the Speaker for the facilitation of this committee andIthank the members of the committee for sacrificing their time to go and write the report from 3rd to 6th July 2014. It is my pleasure to present to you this report on the adoption of a report from the said committee in this house.
Mr. Speaker, you find that in the introduction, this committee found that agriculture and dairy farming as the most lucrative sector. The county has a huge agricultural potential due to the fact it is adjacent to the Aberdares ranges and efforts by the small scale farmers who are working hard to improve their livelihood in Nyandarua County. This is the strength of this sector which is the main activity in the county, amidst challenges facing the sectors such as lack of farming inputs, which are very expensive. In addition, training of the farmers in agribusiness and availability of credit facility is improving the sectorand making it competitive.
Mr. Speaker sir, in the county we have 86 cooperative societies 14of which are in agriculture and dairy sector. The total turnover in agriculture and dairy in 2012 was shillings 866 millionwhich was second from Saccosshares capital, meaning really agriculture is the nerve centre of the economy of this county.
Mr. Speaker, the challenge faced by the sector such as unfavorable weather condition, poor road, infrastructure, which we are trying to improve especially the feeder roads in the county in order to increase the productivity. There were complaints from different sectors due to lack of enough staffs hindering productivity and efficiency.
Mr. Speaker sir, the recurrent expenditure from the ministry of agriculture, livestock development and fisheries was shillings 289,185,838 in the financial year 2013/2014. While the budgetary allocation for the financial year 2013/2014 stands as high as 314,206,500 shillings representing 67% of the total recurrent expenditure. You understand that the recurrent expenditure is very high. My concern is that despite the complaints of the inadequacy of the members of the staff in the county, the recurrent expenditurefigures arestill high which is the reason why the committee undertook the initiative to acquire the staff’s returns from the departments, to analyze their number and the distribution.
Personally, the human resource output should bereflected by the numbers so I think that is a very clear the reason why this committee wrote this report because as you compare the recurrent expenditure and the number of staff, it is not worthy of the output of the staff.
According to the committee, I wish to present to the floor of this county assembly findings of this field visit to sub counties in Nyandarua County. One of the findingsis the shortage of personnel, since 1987 there has been no employment of the staff both in the ministry of agriculture and livestock development. A big number of employees is about to retire almost all of them there are over 45 years of age you find soon there will be no staff in the field because many are about to retire. There are no service providers and you find there many animals dying. There is also a problem of mobility.You find in Nyandarua County, there is only one vehicle servinga whole sub county or two sub counties.That is also another observation of this committee.
Mr. Speaker sir, there are unqualified staff leading to inefficiencies. In July 2014, there were 378 members of staff in the county.Despite the complaints of lack of enough staffs the department does not have optimum staff working levelin terms of how many workers are supposed to work in each department, these leads to incompetence. Hence, you cannot tell their status because it is not clearly indicated and the distribution also, but it is already in the report and I now want to table the report and I know members have them.
There are very few staffs in the fisheries department and I think they all are contracted. If you go to chapter three;status and distribution of the staffs you find that out of 378 employees, 6 members of the staffs are on contract basis, soyou see in fisheries all of them are on contract and none of them is permanently employed by the county.The way I understand economic stimulus programme, we are really projecting in dairy, potatoes and fisheries. If we have all members of staffs on contract basis, I think they cannot effectively work for the county.
Further, the distribution of workers in every sub counties namely; Kinangop, Kipipiri, Ol Kalou, Ndaragwa and Oljororok in the agriculture, livestock development and fisheries department is there well elaborated. If you go to page 8, it is well elaborated where you see that in Kinangop in the department of agriculture there are 34, in livestock 42, fisheries 1 and in irrigation 2.
Mr. Speaker sir, in some areas like Ndaragwa you find in agriculture department they are 29, wherethey have experienced drought. We need more staff to educate our famers on how they can curb the dry spell. If you go page 29 there is that table showing the distribution of the staff in the five sub counties and also, there is distribution of staffs in the institutions and others offices in the county and there listed there. If you go to page 30, we have all the reports of the support staff including their job groups as well as their work station.You also understand wealso have the stations for the agriculture mechanismsthat are still in Nyahururu yet they are for Nyandarua County. Those are areas that we want to come and operate from headquarters. In number 11 on distribution of staff, if you go to page 13, 14 and in page 15, you see the list of retirees.Yousee that there are seven but five of them are retired two of them are deceased. If you go to distribution, the members of staffs in page 16 in the ministry of agriculture, livestock development and fisheries should toward improving the ration of the recurrent expenditure and development expenditure by increasing the development expenditure from 32% to 40%.
You realize that, Nyandarua County depends fully on agriculture. If we do not allocate more moneyfor development to support that department, I think as members we shallfail. I think we can give more money to the development expenditure than the recurrent expenditure.We had the members questioning why we have more recurrent expenditure in the department of agriculture than development expenditure.
The committee recommendationnumber two is that, the department should ensure considerable output from the members of the staffs being reflective, since the recurrent expenditure was shillings 288,185,838 in the financial year 2013was very high. Number three,that the head count should be performed inthe departments in all sub counties, wards, locations and sub location to provide clear status of the staff in the ministry and to ensure fair distribution of staffs within the county. That one is very clear in the report Mr. Speaker.
There issome uncertainty of the people who were paid this money but we know we might have ghost workers. Number four; the staff audit should be done forall staffs in the ministry departments that is, in agriculture, livestock development and fisheries and irrigation and how the workers are distributed. This was arrived atfrom the staff report that was given to the committee as it is reflected on page 14, and the latest report was submitted on30th June 2014 there isa difference of seven in numbers.I really do not understand that but Mr. Speaker, two are said to be deceasedand five are said to have retired. Therefore,noting that the ministry has five members for a period approximately two months, this shows that there is shortage there. These statistics project that,in the long termthis may bethe cause of shortage of staffs noting that,since1987, the department has not employed any member of staff. This therefore means that the department needs to employrelevant staffs members who will be required to serve in various key areas of interest such as bee keeping in Ndaragwa, green houses, irrigation and fisheries since this sectors have not been adequately addressed.
Mr. Speaker, bee keeping is also a source of income in Nyandarua county, fisheries the same and irrigation, so that the youth can also benefit as well as the whole community. Nyandarua County should also come up with other measures to improve dairy, irrigation, green houses, and enough staffs should be employed in the same areas as well.
There is also some uncertainty over distribution of the seeds and it is an issue that we will also table in this house. The department should also consider employing those graduates who are graduating from institutions within the county; we have so many professionals in the county. Number eight, so that we can have more officers, the department should educate farmers so that they can engage themselves effectively. I remember when I was young, I could see agricultural officers visiting farmers and also training farmers how to sort seed and the production at that time was very high. Number nine; we require more agricultural officers who can educate famers on how to deal with the drought especially in some parts of Olkalou and Kaimbaga. Number 10: More officers are needed in the fisheries department, since through economic stimulus, more money was allocated for fisheries department and we cannot have viable projects in either agriculture or fisheries department without staffs.
In conclusion, agriculture being the nerve centres for the economy of Nyandarua County. It is also important to note that effective staffs go a long way in ensuring performance. Various departments in agriculture, livestock development and fisheries should be able to offer technical and professional advice from the ministry.As I have saidthat discrepancies about the shortage of staffs in this ministry should be addressed keenly and proper audit be done to confirm inadequacies of staffs there in. Mr. Speaker, it is envisaged that deployment of experts and professionals in various field will also enhance productivity which is very true. Mr. Speaker sir I urge the county executive committee member responsible to fast track the output of staffs and work toward development of the sector.
Lastly, it is my privilege and duty on behalf of the agriculture, livestock development and fisheries committee to table this report and its recommendations to this house for adoption.As you have seen this report, it is very clear that something is wrong because if the recurrent expenditure is more than development expenditure I think we cannot meet the target.As Nyandarua we are very proud that we are the food basket for the whole nation. I think out of ten potato bags produced in Kenya four of them come from Nyandarua County that is a very big ratio. Mr. Speaker probably agriculture is very broad, but we do not target all areas like livestock development where we target wool production, milk production, bee keeping, potatoes production we also target the value chain and processing.
In the area of veterinary, if there is an outbreak of disease, we require experts to do the vaccination to curb or rather to control the spread of the disease. In other areas like fisheries we do not have enough staffs and those who are there are in contract basis. That means that recurrent expenditure ison the higher side, while the output from the staff is very low. That means that we are in a quagmire. This question was asked by the chairman budget and we as the committee on agriculture we have the right to ensure that we give information to this house so that some areas we talked ofthe budget can allocate more money so that we can have 40% of money allocated to agriculture and fisheries. In other counties like Murang’aCounty, gave about shillings 1 billion to agriculture that means that they are very serious in agriculture they know that it is the only main source of incometo their county.
Mr. Speaker,I know that this report is very clear and honourable members from this house; if you know some of these members of staffs, they do not assist the farmers and some do not even go their offices let us take action. It is relatively good to pay the staff and they also should give good output. With that Mr. Speaker, I call my able vice Chairman, honourable Tiziana to second this report. Thank you Mr. Speaker
Speaker: Thank you honourable Njiraini, Hon. Tiziana
Hon. Tiziana:Thank you, Mr. Speaker sir for giving me this chance, I wish to second this motion on agriculture, livestock and fisheries as pertains those staffs working in that docket.My recommendation would be if it is possible we do the replacement of those staffs whenever we have staff retiring so that we can enough staff in agriculture. The other issue that I would say is that, many of the staffs are over 45 years of age.This is an issue that should be looked at because those people they cannot give much output. They are not digital they are analogue. The other issue is that most of the workers are not efficient since they do not have adequate equipments for example an issue to do with transport. We visited several agriculture officeswhere most of workers walk for long distances and they cannot be efficient. Where there are vehicles, they are in bad state and are not maintained regularly since the ministry does not provide funds to repair them even the motorcycles. Those staffs should be provided with transport means so that they can be able to work efficiently otherwise there will continues complaints bearing in mind that agriculture is the backbone of the county. So, if we fail in agriculture we are going to fail in everything because even if we make roads there will nothing to be transported. The county will be the poorest because we do not have any other cash crop like tea or coffee. Most of potatoes in the country that are sold in Nairobi and Mombasa and elsewhere, come from Nyandarua so we should ensure that these people are provided with facilities so that they can reach out to farmers and offer relevant training. There is another point I wanted to put across is having qualified personnel in the department as we heard in the motion we had before this, the staffs we have should also assist the youths, disabled and the women. How will they assist these people? They can train them on green houses, poultry and bee keeping and fish farming and there will be creation of employment.
If we encourage the staffs there by providing them with the necessary equipment, they will help us in creation of jobs that we are trying to create for the youth, the physically challenged people and women. By so doing they will be a great improvement in the agriculture sector. Once such measures are put into place, agriculture sector in Nyandarua County will improve. It is through agriculture that we as a county we shall be able to get economic strength. By making maximum use of the resources we have, we will not have problems relating to employment and drought that we are experiencing. This is the reason we are saying that agriculture sector should get the highest allocation from the budget every year. Mr. Speaker I would say that the issue of staff should be looked at, very seriously because if we have staffs who can work efficiently everything will be moving in the right direction. With those few remarks, I do second the motion. Thank you
(Question on the motion proposed)
Speaker: Honourable Thuita
Hon. Thuita: Thank you Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker I stand to supportthis motion. Mr. Speaker I would like to congratulate the committee because they have put this report in a very simple manner that every member can look and very clearly understand. One point that I would like to emphasize on is that of staff audit;the actual audit because if you look at the number of these staffs, and you go out there you cannot see them. We would like to know whether the professional and technical staffs are well distributed in our village so that if they are not, they can be distributed well. If they are not enough we can make resolution here that some be contracted Mr. Speaker, I am feeling that the numbers we are having here are not actual and if they are, most of them are in unproductive sector.This point is very critical if we have to move ahead in agriculture in this county. the other one is in the budget, if I look at our county, if the ministry of agriculture is well funded by the county, other sectors like that of cooperative and othersthey can grow because famers can have market of their produce farmers can form very strong societies. Mr. Speaker, if we want anything to move ahead we should start by funding agriculture, livestock development and fisheries department so that other departments like water can be felt to the ground. Without much ado I wish to support this report and the relevant authority do as recommended by the committee. I support