Project Title: Building Capacity To Support Members Of Taita-Taveta County Assembly Project Code: TTCA/00/002 Project Cost : ksh.4,340,000.00 ( MCAs perspectives) (Breakdown 124,000 per MCA x 35= 4,340,000.00) (Transport to and from Zanzibar by road, full accommodation e.g meals, bed, breakfast for the entire week is paid individual MCA from the above allowance) Cost on the Office of the Clerk to the Assembly perspectives ( the office had 5 representatives whose rate of allowance is not captured here) Theme : Governance and Investment Institutional Reform Partners: Zanzibar Regional Assembly, Ministry of Agriculture 1. Background: Taita-Taveta County and Zanzibar Regional Assembly have prepared a comprehensive support program to the MCAs through application of principles and lessons learnt from the Capacity Development for Public Policy Formulation with bias on Strengthening Devolution Management Programs (SDMP) and Sustainable Legislation Programs (SLP). Lessons learnt from these three programs are integrated into the County law- making strategy by promoting the norms of the good county governance practice to cover 4 Counties initially and later up-scaled to the 14. 2. IDENTIFIED CHALLENGES: The challenges for members of the Taita-Taveta County Assembly as policy-makers are insurmountable. Equally challenged are the policy-implementers, the business community, representatives of civil society and development partners. The Assembly and other stakeholders are faced with the problem of how to create a conducive environment for promoting and strengthening devolution through knowledge-based decision–making process and maximizing the benefits of information and communication technology in a devolved system for social development. (Social development is commonly used to include the policies and programs designed to combat poverty, employment crime, social exclusion, ill-health and illiteracy all nobles) 3. Why Zanzibar Is Ideal: The Indian Ocean Island of Zanzibar provides an excellent example of how devolved system is helping even remote communities to have access to resources, power and service delivery. The Island is faced with serious physical space challenge yet it still practices sustainable farming development. 4. OBJECTIVES: 1.Priority Objective of the programme is: To support Taita-Taveta County legislature programmes by strengthening the capacities of the MCAs, speaker’s and clerk to the Assembly’s office to manage delivery and maintenance of legislature infrastructure, services and investment plans. 2. Strategic Objective : To use the knowledge base of the three programs to prepare research study, debate and pass Bills with personal skills providing critical analysis in the process. 3.Operational Objectives: (a) To enhance passage of Bills: adequate laws to all eligible sectors. (b) Improving living conditions of residents in collective sub-counties by enacting mining, tourism, land and wildlife laws. (c) Preparation of required Bills, approval of plans, survey to provide framework for the location and design of resettlements projects and approve undertaking of surveys and studies to improve the information base for better targeting of beneficiaries, as well as to facilitate decisions on project location and design. 4. ACTIVITIES: The main activities include: (a) a meeting-launched project. (b) Workshop held in the Zanzibar to train MCAs on the aim of involving them as key partners in the effective participatory law-making process. (c) Consultation involving all stakeholders in the Zanzibar and Taita-Taveta County Assemblies in planning, law-making and management of the county government.. (d) A quadripartite meeting of the project where priorities were defined with stakeholders and agriculture investors on investment plan, creation of job opportunities for low-income people through construction, rehabilitation of basic infrastructure, extraction of minerals, and services such as markets, drainage and sewerage systems, latrines and solid waste collection 5. LESSON LEARNT: Besides the intricacies and dynamics of the devolved system, investment and farming development in Zanzibar that point to crucial factors in determining long-term economic success in Zanzibar, relevant lessons were learnt and experiences shared : 6.Making the entire legislative process transparent and giving people an opportunity to participate in governance processes in a devolved system promotes devolution. 7.Building investment bridges that link our County with investors, expertise and donors across gaps that are potentially being widened by the forces against devolved system enable us to level the playing field to enable developing our sub-counties to take part in the county economy. 8.The way in which land is appropriated and labour employed, and results in different responses in the County’s economic and social organizations of house-holds and communities. 9.Addressing problems where the natural resource mismanagement, scarcity and increasing limitations on land have forced members of some groups to shift away from traditional economic activities into the subsistence domains of others, resulting in an increased social distance and fierce competition between indigenous people and the settlers. 10.With proper timing of arrival in relation to fertilizers, irrigation equipments and cycles of expansion and resources sought and actually secured the farming development can be carried out profitably. 11.With the expansion of cattle ranching in our County, which has attracted pastoralists from outside the county and which basically requires large expanses of land and only temporary labour, a lesson has been learnt on how to address the plight of people who have been forced into diverse and competing strategies through which they contend with increasingly limited employment, physical space, natural resources and opportunities for further movement. 1.Using the ICT to access the latest prices for communities that they produce or need to buy. The information arrives at a community centre, which houses the computers, then gets disseminated by word of mouth or SMS or is posted in a public place e.g Mosque and Churches area. This information is crucial for farmers as it cuts out the middlemen and vest farmers with bargaining power, enabling them to get the best prices. RESULTS. Three-indepth studies on formulation of strategy and action plan that will result in a Bill that proposes to enact some of the lesson learnt in phases.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:26:12 +0000
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