Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1019617,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1019617/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 331,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Bumula, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Mwambu Mabongah",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13309,
        "legal_name": "Moses Wekesa Mwambu Mabonga",
        "slug": "moses-wekesa-mwambu-mabonga-2"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. At the outset, I want to support this Bill from the Senate. I have a bit of reservations with whatever is happening in counties, right from my county of Bungoma. The Bill will seal all the gaps in terms of financial management. I would like to inform the Majority Whip that when the counties were setting up structures for financial management, staff was seconded from the National Government. You will realise that the sickness that is at the national Government is the same one that is being witnessed in counties in terms of revenue collection. With a standardised form of revenue collection, we will be clear with targets. I am sure that the Senate will look at the capacity of every county and set realistic targets that they are going to achieve in a certain financial year. It has been difficult for us to audit those counties because some of them have localised public finance. It is also very difficult to pin them down based on some of the existing anomalies. The standardised way of revenue collection will provide a clear procedure for audit. It will be easy to know when we have a problem in a certain county. I want to agree with someone who said that some county revenue officers have two receipts. When you talk about lifestyle audit, we do not say that from the blues. We sit and relate with those people. You will be surprised at the lifestyle of a casual officer at the county revenue collection office. That means that most of the collected revenue is being pocketed by those officers. We have all manner of corruption in the counties because we do not have a clear structure of revenue collection. The Leader of the Majority Party said earlier on that it will be easy for us to identity the rotten fruits if we have a standardised way of revenue collection. It will be easy for officers involved to know the rotten counties in terms of revenue collection. The Member for Mavoko indicated that by the time he was leaving the municipal council, Mavoko was collecting Kshs1.5 billion. But he did not tell us whatever is happening in Machakos County now. At one time in my county of Bungoma, we loaned the United Kingdom some money but, at the moment, we cannot collect sufficient cash to pay the salaries of our employees. So, this is timely and I request the Committee and the Senate to follow it up to the letter and ensure that this Bill is passed, so that we can save the amount of cash that is being lost in the hands of the people. Thank you, I support the amendment."
}