Wrangling over the county headquarters is gradually taking centre stage in Taita Taveta as a clique of politicians are ganging up to drum up support for Voi as the central place for the four constituencies.
Some want the county administative centre to be based in Mwatate while others say Wundanyi is the ideal place.
Some want the county administative centre to be based in Mwatate while others say Wundanyi is the ideal place.
“Based on the geographical setting of the place, I think Mwatate can be more cntral for those coming from Wundanyi, Taveta and Voi districts,” said former minister Marsden Madoka. Education assitant minister Calist Mwatela said Mwatate is ideal since it has enough room for expansion.
But former Voi MP Boniface Mganga wants the county to be administered from Voi, saying it was easily accessible and had all it takes for infrastractural development.
Mr Madoka and other former MPs Mwandawiro Mghanga and Mashengu wa Mwachofi have declared their interest in the senatorship while former Public Service assistant minister Boniface Mganga is gunning for the governorship. The arrangement has elicited an uproar from young professionals living both at home and in the Diaspora.
Source: Daily Nation
It would be utterly simplistic to use topography as the main attribute to determine where the headquarters should be. Don’t get me wrong, I am not rubbishing your view. A quick search, even on Google, will reveal a number of large cities ‘which are municipal headquarters’ or even government ‘capitals’ that are in great heights and rugged terrains, with roads full of “scream-prompting” bends and steep climbs. But even before we go there, what do we mean when we talk of headquarters? Is it an administrative headquarters, as in the seat of the county government? Is it the business or economic centre? Or are we being influenced by the fact that for a long time Nairobi served as the capital for everything when the nation could have developed different capitals – for instance Nairobi as the administrative capital, Machakos as the IT hub, etc. There is no need to maintain the ‘Nairobi’ mentality when deciding about the administrative headquarters vis-à-vis the economic hub for the county. True, Mwatate is ‘central’ for administration purpose if you are looking at Taita/Taveta factoring only Taveta, Voi and Wundanyi. If geographical centrality should be the main factor then it is easy to sort. Surveyors, planners, mathematicians, whatnot can do the measurements and tell the people which place is the centre of Taita/Taveta, and problem solved! But there are many factors to be considered. Geologists have to check and determine if the land sites thought to be ‘vast for expansion’ could be sitting on mineral deposits, for example. There would be no point demarcating an area sitting on minerals for human settlement. We should also not forget that the county’s headquarters isn’t going to be the only service centre in the entire county. Just as we had provinces with districts, we will have subdivisions of counties. Now, how many of us really needed to visit Mombasa (which was the provincial headquarters, and not central for that matter) for day-to-day government services? At no point has anyone ever complained about how ‘not central’ [and how restricted it is in terms of expansion, being an island] Mombasa was as a provincial headquarters. Now it is suddenly a big matter that Wundanyi shouldn’t be? For the record, I come from Wundanyi division, but I have settled in Mwatate division. At the end of the day, it is service delivery that matters, the location – as it is – is not such a big issue. Politicians are politicizing a matter that should not be politicized. My view, you have a structure already existing in Wundanyi. Let it be. Invest the money in developing Voi as the economic hub, Mwatate as the mining and industrial hub, and Taveta as the agricultural hub. Let us not forget there is Sagala, Kasigau, Mwambirwa, etc.
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