ONE TALENT AT A TIME, COUNTY CIVIL SERVICE GROWS.

Two years ago, when the County Government was established, inter-clan clashes was a major concern. Loss of human life, however, has since gone down tremendously, thanks to deliberate activities targeting the factors that triggered and fuelled fights.-Ahmed Sheikh Mohamed

On advent of devolution and upon establishment, Mandera County realized it had a 97 per cent staff deficit. The devolution train arrived pregnant with expectations from the people and the County Government knew it was staring at failure, unless it could quickly find the human resource to deliver services. Mandera’s case was “devolution from scratch”, with all the odds lined up against Governor Ali Roba’s team.

“We were the number two poorest county. We had huge security challenges and realised fairly quickly that we also had nearly zero staff. It was a very steep learning curve. Now we have success to talk about,” says Mr. Roba.The Governor says devolution has reinvigorated life and hope locally, and represents a rebirth of Mandera. The County’s minister for public service, conflict resolution, cohesion and integration Mr. Ahmed Sheikh knows how it came to be that there were hardly any civil servants in Mandera.

“We were coming from a history where civil servants would be posted to Mandera as a form of punishment. Indeed, the larger region’s name was North Eastern Province

(NEP) and was ridiculed as Nothing Except Problems (NEP),” he says. He adds that their task now is to make the ‘P’ to stand for pleasure. The County Government has employed 1,400 staff, most of them local. Despite initial apprehension, a way was found to work with the Central Government structures in the sub-counties and officers in all the 30 wards.

As the County programmes take shape, focus by the people has continued to shift from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and the Uwezo Fund. Mr. Sheikh says they have taken a deliberate decision not to grow their wage bill too fast, recognizing that Mandera is starting from a very low infrastructural base and most resources need to go to development.

“We have a self-imposed target of spending at least half of our budget on development, hence we have been building our workforce on need-by-need basis,” says the minister. However, crucial services such as health and education get priority. “When we established the County Government, we found that only three of the 54 medical facilities were operational. And even these three were operating at only 10 per cent capacity due to lack of staff. We have had to recruit 350 health staff,”

said Mr Sheikh.

Special Programmes

Cohesion and integration activities have been accorded a unique slot in the County Government’s programmes, given Mandera’s wrestle with perennial inter-clan skirmishes. Two years ago, when the County Government was established, inter-clan clashes was a major concern. Loss of human lives, however, has since gone down tremendously, thanks to deliberate activities targeting the factors that triggered and fuelled fights.

Clan rivalry was worsened by poor security arrangements and failure to fight petty criminals. This allowed petty crime to fester into crisis levels because the public often ended up arming themselves out of frustration from weak policing. The County Government is working hard to ensure measures are in place to deal with such. The government has initiated frequent peace forums drawing elders from the different clans.

These open channels for communication and resolution of any potential trouble issues before they fester into violent conflict. Addressing a recent peace forum held in Banisa, Governor Roba said it was time the communities forgot the past and concentrated on the progressive issues currently driving the County’s developmental

programme.

“We are in a new era and we have to be planning new things for we have had five months of relative calm in the county as far as the inter-clan clashes are concerned, and it is my prayer that we continue in the same spirit so that we can develop,” says Governor Roba.

General Public Service Appointments

Ethnic Group No. %

Somali 1335 82.5%

Kikuyu 48 3.0%

Kalenjin 36 2.2%

Kisii 33 2.0%

Meru 32 2.0%

Luhya 27 1.7%

Borana 22 1.4%

Kamba 21 1.3%

Luo 20 1.2%

Mijikenda 7 0.4%

Burji 7 0.4%

Embu 6 0.4%

Others 13 0.8%

Mbeere 3 0.2%

Teso 2 0.1%

Samburu 2 0.1%

Swahili 2 0.1%

Tharaka 1 0.1%

Turkana 1 0.1%

Taita 1 0.1%

Total 1619 100.0

Disaggregated General Public Service

(Somali Group)

Clan No. %

Gurreh 729 54.6%

Somali 214 16.0%

Murulle 195 14.6%

Degodia 115 8.6%

Corner Tribe 63 4.7%

Ogaden 8 0.6%

Marehan 6 0.4%

Ajuran 5 0.4%

Total 1335 100.0%

New Appointments

Ethnic Group No. %

Somali 1017 86.0%

Kisii 30 2.5%

Kikuyu 30 2.5%

Meru 23 1.9%

Luhya 18 1.5%

Kalenjin 18 1.5%

Luo 14 1.2%

Kamba 12 1.0%

Mijikenda 5 0.4%

Embu 5 0.4%

Borana 3 0.3%

Mbeere 3 0.3%

Teso 2 0.2%

Swahili 1 0.1%

Burji 1 0.1%

Total 1182 100.0%

Disaggregated New Appointments

(Somali Group)

Clan No. %

Gurreh 657 64.6%

Murulle 181 17.8%

Degodia 97 9.5%

Corner Tribe 63 6.2%

Ogaden 8 0.8%

Marehan 6 0.6%

Ajuran 5 0.5%

Total 1017 100.0%

Public Service Board Members

Clan No. %

Gurreh 3 43%

Murulle 3 43%

Marehan 1 14%

Total 7 100%

CEC Members

Clan No. %

Gurreh 5 40%

Murulle 2 30%

Degodia 2 20%

Corner Tribe 1 10%

Total 10 100