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The government is set to undertake a review process of Section 6 of the Kenya Roads Board Act, 1999 which was declared unconstitutional by the High Court for deny counties billions for road maintenance.
According to Road and Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir, following the court ruling made on last week, the government is ready to share proceeds from Roads Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF) and is seeking legal council.
“We will be working very quickly to resolve that challenge, get a legal interpretation of that ruling that we got on Thursday and how quickly we can reconstitute Section 6 to allow us to be able to share that piece of revenue from RMLF and allow you to maintain our roads in that sharing formula that must include county governments as spoken for by the Constitution,” said Chirchir.
The court found the decision by the National Assembly to exclude counties as beneficiaries of the fund in two financial years 2024/25 and 2025/26 and to deny counties conditional grants from the fund to the tune of Ksh 10.5 billion unconstitutional for violating Article 186 and Section 18 of Part 1 of the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution.
Chirchir said the government is ready to share proceeds of the fund which is collected from fuel imported into the country at the rate of Ksh 25 per litre.
“RMLF does contribute about Ksh 70-80 billion annually that goes into maintaining our roads networks,” he stated.
He added, “We are consulting very widely to see how to unlock that challenge and align RLMF with Schedule 4 of the Constitution to ensure we do not lag behind in releasing the funds that we collect almost on weekly basis through the petroleum levy that then allows us to maintain our roads.”
The government is also seeking a new formula that will guide the sharing of resources collected through RMLF.
Currently, the board which is responsible for managing the fund allocates 50pc to Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA), Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) and Kenya Wildlife Services for the purposes of roads maintenance.
The remaining 50pc is set aside for purposes of securing additional funding to road maintenance.
Chirchir was speaking during the launching of the Kenya Roads Design Manuals which are expected to modernize the country’s road network.
