Eliud Owalo, the Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of the President has announced significant changes in the way the government funds ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs)
Speaking during the performance evaluation of the National Water Harvesting and Storage Authority (NWHSA) on Tuesday, Owalo revealed that the government will evaluate the MDA’s performance and allocate funding as per their performance going forward.
“Moving forward, we are going to tie performance management and performance evaluation to reward management so that we allocate more money to organizations that add more value to the government’s development agenda,” Owalo said.
“The direction we are taking as a government is that we are not going to have organizations that are perpetually underperforming continue to be a drain on the exchequer. These organizations should be allowed to die their natural deaths.”
This strategic move is expected to motivate the MDAs’ management to perform better to get rewarded with better funding as well as to get rid of underperforming ones.
According to Owalo, innovation and self-sufficiency among state agencies are paramount. He, therefore, urged the MDAs to develop independent revenue streams rather than relying solely on the exchequer.
This development comes just two weeks after the government announced the merger and dissolution of several state corporations for redundancy.
President William Ruto's cabinet approved a total of 42 parastatals to be merged into 20, a move that sought to enhance operational efficiency.
Nine other state corporations were earmarked for dissolution. Those already recommended for privatisation were not affected by the merger.
This followed the assessment of 271 State Corporations by the Ministry of National Treasury.
The move did not go without opposition as a section of Members of Parliament from the North Eastern region have already opposed the dissolution of one of the parastatals.
Speaking during their mid-term retreat in Naivasha last week, the Pastoralists Parliamentary Group (PPG) raised concerns over the proposal to dissolve the National Council for Nomadic Education in Kenya (NACONEK), an entity that supports education for students in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) regions.
They decried its categorisation as a state department stating, “It (NACONEK) is a semi-autonomous government agency under the Ministry of Education. It functions as an equity council, advancing the interests of marginalised communities in accordance with Article 56(b) of the Constitution of Kenya.”