Kitui government: how much difference has the Kitui county government made?

Well, I reckon that there are some 4 areas where the Kitui county government has had a real impact, from the time of the first governor Dr Julius Malombe to the Charity Kaluki Ngilu era.

The first area where the Kitui government has had a real impact is that of rural roads maintenance. Simple exercises like the continual grading of roads and the murraming of certain roads within the interior parts of Kitui have made areas that were previously inaccessible possible to access. And that has had a very huge impact on the lives of the people who live in these areas. This is a fruit of devolution, because we now have MCAs following up on roads that previously had nobody to follow up on.

The second area where the Kitui government has had a real impact in is that of healthcare. Isn’t it under Kitui count government that the Kitui general hospital has become a level 5 facility? How much investment went into making the Kitui general hospital qualify for level 5 status? Would such investment have been possible under the previous centralized system?

The third area where the Kitui government has had a real impact in is that of agriculture. So you find that things like the provision of seeds and extension services as well as encouraging farmers to grow crops that are likely to do better (like in Ngilu’s Ngengu/Ndakithi program) as well as initiatives like the Kitui goat auction have had a huge impact. And they are likely to change how people view agriculture in Kitui in the coming days.

The fourth area where the Kitui government has had a considerable impact in is that of empowering locals through various supply tenders. It is important to appreciate that before the era of county governments, many of the tenders being won by locals to supply various things to the Kitui county government would have been dished out at Nairobi. Now it has become possible for Kitui locals to actually win tenders, as  long as they have properly registered companies, and that makes a lot of difference. The money that they earn through the tenders ends up being invested locally in Kitui which translates into more money flowing in the local economy, better local development, local jobs and other positive indicators.