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Published on Friday, 30 December 2011 12:48

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Planning & Vision 2030 Minister, Hon. Wycliffe OparanyaEight districts in the Northern Kenya are set to benefit from a special Constituency Development Fund (CDF) kitty set aside by the ministry of planning and vision 2030.

The 8 District will therefore be guaranteed of a larger share of the constituency development fund when the next Sh3 billion is shared out.

The districts include Mandera East, Wajir East, Mandera Central, Lagdera, and Mandera West, Turkana Central, Turkana North and Turkana South.

The Minister for Planning and vision 2030 Wycliffe Oparanya said several districts in northern part of the Country will be given up to Sh100 million since the allocation was mostly based on the unconvincing 2009 census results.

“We wanted to use accurate figures based on projections as we awaited results of a repeat census but that failed,” Mr Oparanya said.

Local leaders in Northern Kenya were up in arms challenging government decision to cancel census results forcing them to block the repeat in the Court.

The government had in the beginning cancelled the results on the grounds that they were inflated and ordered a repeat though local leaders challenged the decision in court.

The countywide Census that took place in 2009 had previously indicated that Lagdera has 245,123 people, Wajir East 224,418, Mandera Central 417,294, Mandera East 288,687 and Mandera West 319,772.

Also in the Northern part of Rift Valley including Turkana Central had 254,606, Turkana North 374,414 and Turkana South 226,379.

Local areas MPs had on several times called for the government not to discriminate its citizens as these could lead to a break of Law.

Oparanya on the other hand maintains that a repeat of census will be more beneficial in the affected area since it will aide to effectively guide the government in planning development.

Initially the government had set aside a budget of 400 Million inorder to have the census being repeated once more.

The Turkana and the Somali Community who are largely the benneficiaries of the CDF kitty are mostly pastrolist and are therefore out in the day herding their cattle.

As a result of these they hardly come home thus it will give a hard time to Enumerators if even a repeat is done.

The Minister said that a strategy to have the census repeated early this year were thrown away after most villagers sought to migrate in search of water and pasture during the drought.

The Census result that were previously released by Planing Minister Wycliffe Oparanya show Kenyan Somali are the sixth most populous ethnic group with 2,385,572 people, behind the Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo and Kamba.

North Eastern province’s population has risen almost three-fold, from 962,143 ten years ago to 2,310,757 in the year 2009.

When the Minister announced the results, a few experts on reproductive health and population attributed the unusual population increase in the province due to the influx of refugees, high fertility rates and low use of family planning methods.

Ironically when contacted, Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang’ ruled out the influx of refugees saying there were not more than 350,000, since most of whom are in refugee camps were already counted.

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