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{
    "id": 643757,
    "url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/643757/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 69,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Limo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1915,
        "legal_name": "Joseph Kirui Limo",
        "slug": "joseph-kirui-limo"
    },
    "content": "out of stock. All sorts of reasons are given many of them hanging around inefficiencies in procurement and management. This is not going to help this county. Some counties argue that they buy drugs every three months which does not make sense in management science. They should know that health services are not planned for. People do not plan when they will fall sick. How many people plan to fall sick in the next three days? It is actually an act of God. People pray that they do not get sick. It is not going to be possible to be inflexible in terms of procurement of drugs. People will suffer. People get sick after every three months. By God’s grace, they do not have problems for another three months. The issue of procurement of drugs should not arise. Counties should move out of their cocoons. The country is not going to tolerate any more issues of counties saying that the national Government has not sent money. Procurement of drugs should not be a problem. We have KEMSA, which is a Government agency. It is a government to government procurement. The issue of saying that the National Treasury has not sent money should not exist. Why should we hear counties talking about how the National Treasury has delayed funding for procurement of drugs and we never hear of any county talking about how its members have not travelled? They make foreign trips where they are away for almost one month yet we never hear them say that they are not travelling because they have not received funding from the National Treasury. It is an issue of prioritisation. The national Government has done its part by allocating money. The issue of prioritisation is really wanting. We allocate around Kshs200 billion to counties. We have information, which was circulated last week, that the number of pending bills in the counties is staggering. Some counties have bills pending up to Kshs2 billion. Those particular counties have been allocated more than Kshs25 billion since the inception of the county governments in 2013. They have pending bills dating back to the last financial year. They are waiting for the current allocation so as to pay for the pending bills. Budgeting is a very big issue. In 2013, there was a suggestion that county governments should adopt the Constituencies Development Fund structure in terms of budgeting, where once you have budgeted for a certain dispensary, whether the financial year has lapsed or not, that dispensary must be constructed. The problem was that everyone who talked about improvement of devolved functions was seen as an anti-devolution agent. Right now, the structure in county governments is in shambles. The money allocated to them is usually a blank cheque. They come up with a budget which is not implemented. The issue of implementation is wanting. I call upon our brothers in the Senate because 80 per cent of their time is spent legislating or talking about issues touching on the national Government. They summon Cabinet Secretaries and talk about Kenya Airways, higher education and universities. The Senate should understand that its role is to improve services to the people in the counties. Therefore, they should look at legislation which will improve service delivery in the counties. We have never heard the Senate talk about counties which had planned to do this and that and did not implement such. The issue in county governments is implementation. You will find a county had been allocated Kshs5 billion and had planned to spend 20 per cent of those funds on capital projects. At the end of the year, you find that they spent less than 5 per cent on projects leaving a staggering 95 per cent to Recurrent Expenditure. We have not heard anything about that in the Senate. They should not just talk about corruption. They should talk about implementation of the plans which have been listed in the various budgets by the county governments. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}