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{
    "id": 807316,
    "url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/807316/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 277,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "North Horr, FAP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Chachu Ganya",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 18,
        "legal_name": "Francis Chachu Ganya",
        "slug": "francis-ganya"
    },
    "content": "mandates that are not theirs. I wish they could refer to the Constitution and focus on their mandate of ensuring that county governors are held accountable, of course, working in close collaboration and coordination with members of county assemblies. In many counties where governors have not been re-elected – mine being one of them – most critical projects such as abattoirs, big stadiums and major hospitals that have been initiated in the interest of the people of those counties have been neglected. It is just because the new Governor happens to have his own priorities. It is really a shame. Those projects are for the people of the county. It will make a major and fundamental difference in provision of services to the people of those counties. We should even legislate to demand completion of projects that have been started using taxpayers’ money before new projects are initiated by a new administration. People have, on the Floor of this House, queried the parameters being used by the Commission on Revenue Allocation and approved by the Senate. People are wondering how funds are being allocated. They have been looking at population, equity share, land size, fiscal responsibility, among other aspects. There is a tendency, especially in this House, which really irritates some of us. There is so much push to only use population as the only parameter for sharing resources in this country. There is no way you can compare a county like Kiambu to Marsabit County or Turkana County. With land the size of 15 per cent of this nation, Marsabit County in particular, if nothing else, the land size should make the difference. That is where people have to travel thousands of kilometres just to visit a health centre or go to the next secondary school. It makes a difference on how Kenyans access services in those counties. That is why the parameter for land size is very critical. We have counties where every inch of road is tarmacked; every inch of that county has a hospital, a secondary school and some 10 to 20 universities. Some of us are yet to know what a tarmac road is. We are thankful for the stretch of the road that goes to Marsabit through Moyale and passes through our counties. However, more than three quarters of our counties are yet to see or even hear of something called ‘tarmac road’. I have only one hospital in my entire constituency, which is as big as the whole of Western, Nyanza, Central and Nairobi regions put together. It has a diameter of 800 kilometres. People have to travel for over 600 kilometres to reach the next hospital – even for caesarean section. Many women end up dying on the way due to travelling on very bad roads yet we say the counties are equal. From the time we attained Independence until the time of promulgation of the new Constitution – which is not that new anymore – we have had a very skewed way of allocating resources in this nation. That is why our counties can never be equal. They will never be equal until we have some major undertakings – something like the marshal plan that was done in the US – to ensure that we are all equal. There is no way we can do what some members are advocating here; that we use population as the only parameter for sharing out resources, like we have done in sharing out the NG-CDF and other funds. If that were to be the case, we will never build this nation together because there is no way you can say that is fair. We are not equal. This was a deliberate government policy. In 1965, through a policy paper prepared by the late Tom Mboya, the Government decided to invest all our resources in the high potential areas of the country, hoping that the benefits of that policy would eventually trickle down to the marginal areas, which are less endowed. However, that did not happen. It is that skewed policy that has marginalised most parts of this nation. That is why, in terms of development, we are worlds apart. That is a fact. The Equalisation Fund and other resources are there to mitigate and reverse those trends. People have forgotten the history of this country in terms of how policies have been made. They The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}