The national government is preparing to amend Section 6 of the Kenya Roads Board Act, 1999, after the High Court declared it unconstitutional for denying counties their rightful share of the Roads Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF).
Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir confirmed that the government is actively seeking legal guidance on how to restructure the law in line with the Constitution.
The ruling, delivered last Thursday, found that the exclusion of county governments from benefiting from the RMLF in the 2024/25 and 2025/26 budgets violated Article 186 and Part 1 of the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution.
“We will be working very quickly to resolve that challenge…and allow county governments to maintain our roads in a sharing formula that must include them as spoken for by the Constitution,” said Chirchir.
The announcement was made during the launch of the new Kenya Roads Design Manuals, aimed at modernizing the country’s road infrastructure for better safety, durability, and sustainability.
The controversial section had effectively blocked counties from accessing Ksh 10.5 billion in conditional road maintenance grants over two fiscal years. The court ruling now paves the way for a broader, constitutionally aligned revenue-sharing model.
Currently, the RMLF—sourced from a Ksh 25 per litre fuel levy—generates Ksh 70–80 billion annually.
It is mainly distributed between the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA), and Kenya Wildlife Service.
