Government has spent Ksh 12B in drought mitigation, says Oguna

The government has spent over Ksh 12B to mitigate the impact of drought across the country.

In a statement, Government spokesperson Cyrus Oguna said the government has rolled out both long-term and short-term interventions to 23 counties facing food and water shortage.

Baringo, Garissa, Isiolo, Kilifi, Kitui, Lamu, Mandera, Marsabit, Samburu, Tana River, Turkana and Wajir counties face severe risk of drought.

Oguna revealed that over Ksh 667M under the cash transfer programme was disbursed to 225, 705 households in the 23 counties where 2.4M Kenyans are affected in the month of December 2021.

“The amount of money to each household within this program is Ksh 3,000. This amounts to Ksh 667,115,000 that was disbursed by the Government to the beneficiaries in the month of December 2021,” he said

“In the month of January 2021, Ksh 495, 384, 000 was disbursed to 165,128 households from the most affected 12 ASAL Counties,” he added

A total of Ksh 3.3B was spent between the months of July to October 2021 to support about 415,000 vulnerable households in ASAL counties under the Inua Jamii programme.

In addition, the government has rolled out Hunger Safety Net program to provide cash relief assistance to 100,000 households in Marsabit, Mandera, Turkana and Wajir Counties with each household receiving Ksh 5,400 every two months.

Oguna said the government will increase the number of counties to be covered by the Hunger Safety Net program.

Further the government invested Ksh 450M into the livestock off-take programme which is aimed at buying weak cattle from farmers to prevent losses.

11 cattle and 3,200 goats have been bought from farmers from the 12 most-affected counties.

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