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{
    "id": 584230,
    "url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/584230/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 238,
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    "content": "in the last two or three days for all the wrong reasons. Members of the county assembly travelled to Congo Brazzaville for two weeks for the All African Games, spending very interesting and ridiculous amounts of resources. Members of the public expressed their anger over the same, but we have just seen them on news, demonstrating. We want to provide a structured mechanism where they can capture those issues, present them in an orderly manner and expect that the county assembly will sit down and address them. Those are the issues that we hope this Bill will help us address. Madam Temporary Speaker, again, once a budget has been passed – and I want to agree with the Mover of the Bill – we need greater sharing of information between the county governments, county assemblies and members of the public. This will ensure that people in each of our wards in the country know how many roads will be done within their counties every financial year. They also need to know the names of those roads, so that within the year, they put the county government to account if those roads have not been done. As stipulated in the Public Finance Management Act, the county government budgets must be project-based. We should not be given block figures like we see in our counties; where a county government says that in their budget they are going to do 350 kilometres of murram roads and they put a block figure of Kshs400 million. People on the eastern side of the county think that roads were made in the south, while those in the south think that roads were made in the north. We need to ensure that we have project-based budgets, so we help the members of the public in terms of playing their oversight role and ensuring that some of these projects are implemented within the counties. Once they realize that there are issues that are not being addressed, as provided for within the budget, they can use the opportunity to present their petitions to the county assemblies. This will enable the county assemblies to apply their mechanisms of oversight and ensure that the county executives do their jobs. Madam Temporary Speaker, this Bill provides us with an opportunity to have greater interaction by the citizens with members of the county governments and assemblies. We urge the members of the public that for devolution to succeed and take root in this country and achieve the intended purpose, members of the public must play their active role in terms of public participation, at the point of developing the county budgets. But they must also ensure that they play their oversight role in ensuring that projects within their counties are implemented in a manner that is anticipated in the budget and their development plans. Therefore, this Bill gives the Senate an opportunity to ensure that we have that legal framework established. Madam Temporary Speaker, I urge the Senators to support this Bill and ensure that we walk together with the county assemblies. This will ensure that we are able to reduce the number of petitions coming to the Senate from the counties. The Senate will only deal with the very technical ones. Once members of the public have presented their issues to a county assembly through a petition, if they are not happy with the outcome in the county assembly, they still have the right to petition the Senate. Therefore, we are not shutting out petitions from our counties. We are only saying that those that can be addressed within the county assembly should be dealt with at that The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}