The Senate Standing Committee on Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations has resolved to initiate an audit of all laws existing before the promulgation of the 2010 constitution to identify those that require to be amended to align with the constitution.

In a statement to the Senate by the Committee Vice - Chair Sen. Catherine Mumma, the committee noted the need to review the devolved sector laws and align them to the Constitution of Kenya 2010 as they are contributing to the claw-back on the implementation of devolution.

According to Sen. Mumma, a total of 63 laws were found to still contain provisions that are facilitating a claw back on devolution and need to be amended, reviewed, or repealed to be aligned to the Constitution.

The Committee recommended that the laws be assigned to the different standing committees of the senate, according to their mandates.

The committee in its report termed the exercise as urgent and big therefore requires the deployment of special resources to be accomplished in a timely manner. It proposed that the Senate consider providing additional research and expert services to enable the sector reviews and drafting of all the bills required to align all the laws with the constitution.

The report reveals the need to review 24 laws falling under Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Health 15, Land, Environment and Natural Resources 10, Roads, Transport and Housing 4, National Security, Trade, Industrialization and tourism 2, Defence and Foreign Relations 2 then Labour and Social Welfare, Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations, Energy and Finance and Budget 1 each.

The committee appealed to the House to support the effort of filling the legislative gaps to enable full implementation of devolution.

“The Devolution Committee would like to urge colleagues in the house to fully support this effort and work towards clearing the backlog in the review of the laws, after all, legislating the laws for the faithful implementation of devolution is Senate’s primary mandate and the blame for having unconstitutional laws in our books begins at our doorstep before moving to other actors,” explained Sen. Mumma