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{
    "id": 807263,
    "url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/807263/?format=api",
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    "content": "the Senate for purposes of supervising and ensuring accountability in the counties. This House must take this matter with the seriousness it deserves. Most Senators have gone into handling matters that should be handled by the National Assembly. I think they are doing this because we have not given them capacity. I urge this House to consider putting aside the resources that the Senators need to supervise counties. The other issue is that our counties are being given resources for fuel as part of the fuel levy fund. In the current Budget, they have been allocated about KShs8.2 billion to be able to take care of roads in the counties. If you go to some counties today, you will not find good roads. The governors want to take credit for roads that are being done by the national Government. We want the Senate to be very serious. We want to see a serious audit on the resources that have been allocated to the counties as part of fuel levy because I personally have not seen those resources being taken care of well. I do not even know whether the counties have engineers who should check whether the county roads are being properly constructed. In my county, my governor fired all the engineers and the accounting officers because we complained that we are not seeing value for the resources that are allocated to those departments. I urge counties to follow in the footsteps of the President who fired all the accounting officers in the departments of finance and procurement. In the end, we will see as a House that all the resources that we have put in the counties are well-utilised. It is not a lie that most governors are rich. They have become rich because of the resources that we have given to them. I am not surprised that most of the Members in this House are planning to become governors after the end of the term of this Parliament. The attraction is that there will be resources which some of them will benefit from. I urge my colleagues who are here and are interested in running for the position of governor that they should not be interested in running for that position because of the resources or the riches that governors have right now. My colleague, Hon. Chris Wamalwa, is complaining because he is already campaigning to become the governor for Trans-Nzoia County. When they get those positions, I urge them not be a disgrace to this House in the manner in which they dispense resources. Kenyans fought and died for devolution. We want to see resources going to the ground and being utilised to benefit the people who fought for devolution. We did not fight for devolution for the sake of it. We fought for it because we wanted to transfer benefits to the people. If those benefits are not being realised, then maybe we will urge the President to wind up some counties which are suffering from leadership malaise. Their governors are unable to even address fundamental issues, constitute serious cabinets and appoint their deputies. We need to look at devolution in a better way. We do not want to be a House that takes two seconds or minutes to approve budgets allocated to counties and we do not even have a serious conversation on how those counties are using resources. I support the Bill but in future, we need to change the approach in which we look at the budgets to counties so that we have better accountability and a better way of looking at how resources are spent in order for us to say that we are a House budgeting for the good of Kenyans. I support the Bill."
}