Nyeri is among 20 other counties working on a raft of regulations to ease public access to information on environmental conservation and mitigation of the impact of climate change.
Addressing reporters at the Nyeri Governor’s office today, Commission on Administrative Justice (CAJ) commissioner, Ms. Dorothy Jemator, lauded Nyeri as one of the counties that had made remarkable strides in creating mechanisms of addressing complaints from the public on matters touching on environmental changes.
Ms. Jemator, who met and held talks with Governor Mutahi Kahiga, further said the commission will continue supporting counties to realise their goals of sensitising the public on the effects of climate change and mitigation measures required under the Financing Locally-Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) program.
“This is a programme that is being run in 20 counties and Nyeri is one of the counties we are working with in terms of helping them develop policies that will touch on how to address complaints.
We are quite glad that they have already developed one of the complaints handling mechanisms in the FLLoCA programme that looked at the issue of climate action. We are also here to support the county in domesticating access to information laws and tomorrow we might be speaking to the Speaker of the (County) Assembly or any representative to inform us where they are as far as coming up with a draft on access to information law (is concerned),” she told reporters.
On his part, Kahiga applauded the commission’s initiative to support counties in tackling changing climatic patterns.
He also underscored the need for enhancing public access to information on matters touching on ecological changes and pledged to partner with the national government in spearheading efforts in addressing any existing gaps to that end.
“We want to work very closely with the FLLoCA programme. It is one of our very major projects that we are going to be implementing in our 30 wards with an allocation of more than Sh 235 million.
We are working closely with the national government, especially on matters of access to information; addressing complaints is one of the weaknesses in governments. In government, you only get what is necessary for you unless you seek information,” said the governor.
FLLoca is a five-year programme funded by the Government of Kenya, the World Bank and other donors with the sole aim of delivering locally led climate resilience actions and strengthening county and national governments’ capacity to manage climate risk.
To support the initiative, the CAJ is spearheading the efforts through capacity building at the county-level structures on complaint handling (grievance redress mechanisms) and promotion of the rights to information.
To achieve this, the commission has developed the Model Complaint Handling Policy for County Governments and the Model County Access to Information Law to give counties a reference document.
Among the commission’s objectives are offering technical support in the drafting and domestication of the Model County Complaints Policy, providing technical assistance in the resolution of FLLoCA-related complaints and strengthening counties access to Information through domestication of the Model Access to Information Law.
By Samuel Maina and Mumbi Kinaro
