Determinants of Negative Perceptions towards Narok County Council by the Resident Communities.

Abstract

The Narok County Council offers a range of services for the community living in its area of jurisdiction - Narok North and South Districts. Some of these services include provision of bursaries to students from poor families in both secondary and tertiary institutions. Through LATF, which is a fund from the central Government to all local authorities, the council sponsors capital projects like construction of schools, road repairs, sinking boreholes and dispensaries. The council is also responsible for Early Childhood Education by employing teachers in these centers. It also mobilizes the community for disease awareness, like HIV/AIDS, markets cleaning and funding the disabled and other less fortunate members of society. Other services provided by the council include defraying medical bills, managing cattle dips and market planning. With this important role in the provision of services, the council still faces a big image problem. In the recent past the council experienced massive public demonstration against it, culminating in the destruction of council property. It's against this background that this study seeks to identify factors responsible for this negative perception towards the council by the public with a view to come up with suggestions or recommendations to boost the council's image/reputation. The location of this study is the County Council ofNarok area of jurisdiction - Narok North and South districts. The target population will include a sample of the people living in both Narok North and South districts, the council's senior, middle level and junior officers. Others include councilors, area members of parliament and key informants. Descriptive survey design will be used in the study. Both random and non-random sampling techniques will be employed in the study to select samples to be studied. The researcher will use questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions and observations to conduct the study. The data will be collected by following systematic procedures. The data will be analyzed using statistical and graphical techniques which include measures of central tendency (the mean, median, and mode) and measures of dispersion (the variance, range). Graphical presentations will include histograms, bar-graphs, cumulative frequency curves and pie-charts. The literature reviewed covered countries in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. The literature included books, journals, Academic papers, newspapers, official council and ministry records.