Education, Youth, Sports, Culture and Social Services

The county has 1,000 ECD centres with total enrolment of 47,960 pupils and 1,503 teachers. The teacher/pupil ratio is 1:32.

Primary Education

The county has 512 primary schools, 5,993 teachers, total enrolment of 191,829 and a transition rate of 70 percent. The teacher/pupil ratio is 1:32. In this category there is a shortage of teachers which the county government and national will have to deal with in order to ensure that we attain the required ratio of 1:20. There is need also to improve the transition rates in the county.

Youth polytechnics

The county has one \science and technology institute (Michuki Technical Training Institute), 65 youth polytechnics with a population of 7570 students, three accredited colleges and four non accredited colleges. All these are middle level institutions where the
youth get skills suitable for the labour market.

Secondary Education

The county has 306 secondary schools, 4,095 teachers and a total enrolment of 103,946 students. This represents a gross enrolment of 71.04 percent. In this category, the government has attained a teacher /student ratio of 1:25. There is need to put more effort
in ensuring that gross enrolment is raised to 90 percent.

Tertiary Education

The county has a public university; Murang’a University of Technology and a private university; Pioneer University.

Adult and continuing education

There are 127 centres in the county with 155 classes. The centres have 73 instructors on part time basis and 53 on full time basis. Enrolment is classified into Basic literacy, ACE primary, ACE secondary. The average enrolment is 358 for male and 1590 for female.

Youth, Culture and Social Services

The county has various cultural sites among them; Mukurwe-wa-Nyagathanga in Kiharu, Tuthu Cultural Site (Karuri WA Gakure) in Kangema, and Mugo (Chege) WA Kibiru Cultural Centre in Gatanga.

Youth Polytechnics

1. Improvement of infrastructure and building new ones.
2. Purchasing and improving of tools and equipment’s.
3. Capacity building of instructors.
4. Employment of more qualified instructors.

Sports

1. Talent identification
2. Infrastructure Development
3. Talent Academy
4. Sports equipment and tools

Social Services

1. Rehabilitation of social halls
2. To mobilize and sensitize community in order to participate actively in all project activities;
3.  To enhance the capacity of community members to initiate, plan, and implement and monitor activities, which promotes their own livelihood
4. To promote, register and build the capacity of community groups in order to accelerate their participation in project activities

Culture

1. Development of Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga
2. Rehabilitation of cultural sites in the county
3. Establishment of a cultural studio
4. Nurturing and development of talents e.g. in music, dance and drama
5. Freedom fighters
6. Construction of county theatre

Sports facilities

There are various sports grounds in the county which include Rurii in Mathioya, Gen Kago in Kangema, Ihura and Mumbi grounds in Kiharu, Matenjagwo in Kandara, Kimorori in Maragua, and Gachibi grounds. There are other private health clubs spread across the county.

Agriculture, Livestock & Irrigation

Main crops produced
The major cash crops in the County include tea, coffee, avocado, mangoes, macadamia and horticulture crops, among others. Horticultural crops include tomatoes, cabbages, kales, spinach and French beans while food crops include maize, beans, bananas, sweet potatoes and cassava.

Acreage under food and cash crops

The acreage under food crops and cash crops are 329,234 and 177,636 respectively. The acreage under food crop is almost twice that of cash crop. Food crop farming is practiced in all parts of the county but cash crop farming is practiced in upper zones and in some
lower zones of the county.

Average farm sizes

The average farm size for most of the county’s households is 1.4 acres. As a result of this, farmers are not able to produce large quantities of crops to warrant large storage facilities at household level. Nevertheless, the average large scale farm size is 16 acres which are commonly found in the lower parts of the county and in tea, coffee, pineapples, mango, and flower estates.

Main livestock breeds and facilities

The main livestock bred in the county are cattle, pigs, goat, sheep, rabbits and chicken. Exotic cattle breeds are found in the upper parts of the county while indigenous cattle breeds are found in the lower parts of the county. Dairy and indigenous goats are spread all over the county but they thrive well in the lower parts. Pigs are of different varieties and reared all over the county due to readily available market offered by Farmers’ Choice. Rabbits and chicken are reared in response to demand for white meat.

Apiculture (bee keeping)

Apiculture in the County is underutilized with concerted efforts to improve it. Currently, there are approximately 11,962 beehives.
Irrigation schemes (small/ large scale)

Irrigation scheme

Murang’a County has two main categories of irrigation schemes namely smallholder community irrigation schemes and individual/private schemes. Smallholder community irrigation schemes are initiated, owned, operated and managed by the scheme members. The majority of the schemes in Murang’a County fall under this category. Water for these schemes is usually abstracted from the rivers and conveyed to the farms by gravity through closed conduits for ultimate use. The most common water application method is the sprinkler system. These schemes further fall into complete and operational irrigation schemes, designed irrigation projects, proposed irrigation projects. Complete and operational schemes and designed irrigation projects have 12 schemes each.

Individual/private schemes are managed by companies or individual farmers. These private schemes are normally large scale farms that grow high value crops like cut-flowers, French beans, pineapples, coffee, etc. These schemes include: Delmonte Ltd, Kakuzi Ltd, Enkarsiti Farm, Simbi Roses, Aberdare/Thuita Farm, Bendor Farm in Gatanga Sub-county, and Everest Farm Maragua Sub- County. The total irrigated area by the private/individual schemes is about 200 ha. Most of these schemes use pump-fed sprinkler and/or drip system. To achieve the vision of being the model County in small holder irrigation in Kenya, the strategy recommends that immediate investments be committed in the short term towards completion of fifteen ongoing and the three fully designed projects that will enable it increase agricultural production from the current 60% to 90%. A detailed survey and design will also require to be undertaken for the twenty eight proposed irrigation projects.

Public Service

The department is charged with public service management and supervision of the operations of the County Government departments. The key objective of the department is to ensure coordinated approach to sector-wide development for maximum synergy. The sub-sectoral
priorities during the period will include:

Public Service Administration (HR)

1. Develop and operationalize the Strategic Human Resource plan.
2.  Develop a transformative organizationa l culture.
3. Carry out a workload analysis
4. Develop and review county organizationa l structures
5. To develop and implement recruitment and maintenance policies.
6. Develop and implement Training and Development policy.
7. Leadership development and team building.
8. Develop and implement performance management system.
9. Develop a reward and sanction framework.
10. Establish Monitoring and evaluation policy.
11. Training on performance management.
12. Develop and implement an employee welfare policy
13. Establish a liaison office.
14. Establish an industrial dispute resolution committee.
15. Acquire adequate and secure filing system.
16. Digitize all manual Human Resource Records.
17. Training on records management

Administration and Coordination (Governorship)

1. Improve efficiency in coordination
2. Optimized communication channels
3. Implement the M & E Policy
4. Support in terms of resource allocation.
5. Public Awareness creation and enforcement of existing laws.
6. Recruitment and training of enforcement personnel
7. Operationalize legal department
8. Support through adequate resource allocation

Finance, IT and Economic Planning

This sector is charged with revenue collection, prudent resource allocation, policy direction,
supervision, and economic affairs. During the period, the following will be the sub-sectoral
priorities:

Finance

1. Capacity building of staff
2. Expansion of County Treasury (Establishing Sub County offices)
3. Enhance public participation in the entire PEM framework
4. Enhance internal control systems (Audit Committee and Team Mate Audit System)
5. Expand IFMIS to sub counties
6. Enhance record keeping system and efficient stores
7. Automation of revenue collection
8. Mapping of county revenue streams
9. Preparation of county revenue policy

IT

1.  Capacity building of staff
2. Enhance office connectivity and communication infrastructure
3.  Provide IT equipment and accessories
4. Establish Information Resource Centres (Ujumbe)
5. Establish E-Government system across the county
6. Procurement of media production equipment and editing software.

Economic Planning

1. Timely preparation of quality requisite County policy documents
2. Review implementation of CIDP 2018-2022
3. Review implementation of ADP 2018-2019
4. Monitoring, Evaluation and reporting of county programmes and projects.
5. Conducting statistical surveys and establishment of county statistical database.

Commerce, Trade, Industry & Investment

Trade, Tourism, Investment, Agri-Business, and Cooperatives sector seeks to improve community incomes and livelihoods through business innovation and incubation. It also seeks to create employment opportunities through trade and tourism development. During the pla n
period 2019/2020, the sub-sector priorities will include:

Trade Development and Promotion

1. Market development
2. Construction of sanitation blocks
3. Enhance market accessibility and connectivity
4. Avail piped, clean and safe water in the market centres
5. Street/Market lighting
6. Enhance marketing and market information
7. Facilitate affordable and accessible credit facilities to traders
8. Murang’a County Fiscal Strategy Paper Page 31

Tourism

1. Development of tourism attraction sites
2. Marketing of tourist attraction sites
3. Capacity building
4. Tourism product development

Industrial Development and Investment

1. Agro-processing and manufacturing of farm produce (Value addition)
2. Enhance market information and access (milk, macadamia, coffee, tea, avocadoes, French beans, mangoes, bananas)
3. Enhance market linkage (local and international)
4. Development of agribusiness portal
5. Transform agricultural enterprises from subsistence to agribusiness.
6. Capacity building

Cooperative Development

• Capacity building
• Enhance market linkage
• Enhance/streamline management of cooperative societies

Agri-Business

• Promote e-marketing for agriculture based produce and products
• Capacity building of farmers

Land Planning & Housing

Land ownership categories/ classification

Land in Murang’a County is classified into freehold or leasehold land. Freehold land is held  by an individual for an unspecified period of time while leasehold land is given by the government to an individual or organization over a specified period of time and is
expected to remit rent to the government.

Percentage of land with title deeds

Murang’a County is predominantly agricultural therefore, landholding is considered important. It is estimated that about 33,000 farmers have title deeds with a population of about 250,000 farmers.
Incidence of landlessness

Majority of the county population own land. Incidence of landlessness is approximately 0.2per cent. This is as a result of concerted efforts by the government to resettle the landless at Maranjau area in Kambiti Location of Maragua constituency.

Housing
In Murang’a County, more than 40% of the households live in stone/brick walled houses, less than 58% in mud/wood walled houses while about 2% live in grass straw/tin walled houses. Most housing units in the county are roofed with corrugated iron sheets (about 95%), while makuti and grass roof constitute 0.18% of the households. Majority of these housing units have earth floor (60%), followed by cement floor at 39%. Records from the county department of housing indicate that the county has there are 47 low grade, 13 middle grade county government owned houses and no high-grade houses.

Environment, Natural Resources ,and Climate Change

Major degraded areas/hotspots and major contributions to environmental degradation

The county’s main environmental pollutants are classified as emissions from Green House Gases (GHGs), agrochemicals from agricultural activities and factories, quarrying activities, and various other activities that pollute the environment through human induced activities and solid wastes from towns and markets. The GHGs disrupt atmospheric balance and global warming therefore heating the earth surface. Solid wastes include plastic and polythene papers (banned), glass, human waste, animal waste, organic plant matter, synthetic materials, rubber and medical waste. Dumping and management of solid waste to the environment remains a major challenge for the County. Only Murang’a Town has a sewerage treatment plant. Makuyu, Maragua, Kangari and Kangema Towns as well as Kiria-ini, Kahatia, Kandara, Kenol, and Kigumo Markets are in dire need of solid waste management facilities. The main forest product in the county include: timber (approximated at over 64 million running feet), firewood (over 500,000 stacks) and seedling production, both KFS(3,400,980) and private (87,458,280) bringing the total number of seedling production at 90,859,260. Other minor forest products include grass (1948 in bags), bamboo sticks (1638 pieces), medicinal herbs, honey and charcoal (335 bags). The forests are also the major sources of various rivers namely Maragua, Mathioya North, Mathioya South, Kiama, and Thika rivers. The sector’s major role is to ensure sector-wide mainstreaming of climate change initiative s
and environment conservation. In order to achieve this, the priorities during the period are:

1.  Prevention of noise and air pollution
2. Increase farm forest cover
3. Rehabilitate degraded sites
4. Promotion of clean energy
5. Integrate climate change measures into county policies strategies and planning
6. Capacity building on environmental issues
7. Proper waste management mechanisms

Health, Water & Sanitation

In order to satisfy water and sanitation needs, the sub-sectoral priorities during the plan period 2019/2020 will entail:

Water and Sanitation

• Development of water harvesting and storage infrastructure
• Enhance user education on water and sanitation management
• Enhancing Public-Private Partnerships to invest and participate in water and sanitation provision.
• Strengthening stakeholder participation in all water and sanitation initiatives.
• Enhancing compliance with an environmental, statutory and legal requirement

Water resources

Murang’a County’s water resources are rivers, shallow wells, springs, dams, boreholes and roof catchment. There are 10 permanent rivers, 400 shallow wells, 75 springs, 30 dams and 100 bore holes that supply water for domestic and agricultural use in the county. All these sources supply 60 per cent of the county population with clean and safe drinking water.

Water supply schemes

The county has 27 water supply schemes and about 16 irrigation schemes. Water supply schemes are managed by three different entities. There are some which are managed by the water companies, the department of water and others by the community members through water project committee. The irrigation schemes managed by the community members, get funding from community’s own initiatives as well as through government
and development partners’ support.

Water sources and access (distance to the nearest water points by sub-county)

In the county, the mean distance to the nearest water point is 3 Km with about 29.4per cent of the households taking five to 14 minutes. Water supply schemes such as the Gatanga community water schemes supply water directly to households at reasonable cost. The county will expand the capacity of water schemes to ensure a minimum of 40per cent of the households are directly supplied with water.

Sanitation

About 99.78 per cent of the households in the County use toilet facilities. Out of these, 4.97per cent use flush toilets, 3.97per cent use VIP latrines while the others use ordinary pit latrines. The majority of people living in the market and trading centres use ordinary pit latrines.

Health Access (Health Facilities, Health personnel and their distribution by sub county)

The County has 272 health facilities serving a population of 959,701. It has one County referral hospitals and six sub-county hospitals, three mission and one private hospital. There are 26 public health centres, 114 dispensaries (89 public and 25 mission/NGO) and 137 private clinics. The County has 1250 medical personnel working in government health facilities with 650 nurses, 39 doctors, 54 clinical officers, 138 public health officers and 38 laboratory
technicians and technologists among other medical personnel. Health facilities in the county are inadequate and there is need to improve the situation.

Morbidity: Five most common diseases in order of prevalence

The most prevalent diseases in the County are: malaria/fever (2 per cent), flu (20.64 per cent) diarrhoea (11.45 per cent), respiratory tract infections (10.86 per cent) and stomach- ache (6.54 per cent). Morbidity situation in the county may change soon due to increasing number of motor cycle accidents. The health personnel have been spearheading campaigns to reduce the prevalence of the diseases especially for children less than five years.

Immunization coverage

The immunization coverage stands at 92 per cent. Efforts are being made to ensure that all children are immunized against preventive diseases. The medical personnel have now changed the strategy of waiting for children to be brought to health, by moving from house
to house to ensure that no child is left out.

Energy, Transport and Infrastructure Development

Roads, Rail Network, and Airstrips

The County has several road categories, with its mandate restricted to the unclassified category. The roads Authority plans to undertake GIS mapping of the roads to counter the challenge of data inadequacy, which the sector faces. There are five bus parks in the County,
namely: Murang’a in Murang’a town, Kiria-ini in Mathioya, Kangema in Kangema town,
Kangari in Kigumo, and Kirwara in Gatanga.

Energy access

The energy subsector promotes environmental friendly, sustainable and renewable sources of energy. There are 123,900 electric connections, out of which 23115 are new ones. About 1% of the households use solar energy. The Last Mile Connection Project envisages connecting more than 85% of the households. Other main sources of energy commonly used in the county are firewood, paraffin, charcoal, and LPG gas. Solar powered lights were installed along a 2km stretch in Kabati. Some other 55 poles were installed across the county in areas such as Makuyu, Mbombo and Kambiti for fruit vendors during the 2013- 2017 plan period.