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{
    "id": 1057148,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1057148/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 208,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "that the Senate is doing a bad job. There is no leadership. This is because they are just waiting for money from the national Government. We need to review. I wish BBI had looked at Chapter 12. This is because in Naivasha in 2009, before the 2010 referendum, there was a very light memorandum from the National Treasury with respect to Chapter 12 on public finance. That is why we have many problems. Ms. Christine Lagat told this country that the cost of the administrative structures in this new Constitution will give us a problem like it has been said in many countries. We are adding that with the BBI in as much as I support it. We need to rethink. Are we setting up our counties to succeed? If you look at formulas, countries like India have within their formula variables that make counties compete. The marginal increase in your county Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contributes to whether you get more money. Today, our formulas are heavy on population and poverty. This means that a governor who is ‘a governor for life’ would want to make sure that his or her county is as poor as possible with as many people as possible. That will mean they will get more money. We are not competing properly. We have asked for certain indices to be put in the formula going forward. I hope the next Senate that doses the next Revenue Sharing Basis we will look at it. Poverty index in the world of today is a measure of darkness. It only tells the ratio of those who are below or above the poverty line. You need to look at human development index. The CRA brought many good variables. They started looking at the issues of water and access to health care. In as much we do not know how they counted the access to healthcare saying the number of visits to hospitals yet Sen. Wambua’s county may not have enough hospitals to even visit in the first place. We need make sure counties compete on productivity and raise revenue, so that we grow as a country. That competition is not the way governors are doing it. I was in Meru over the weekend. Between Meru, Isiolo and Nanyuki, everyone is putting cess points. It makes it difficult to trade. You have to stop your truck. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, some of the work I do is in branded advertising. The headache from Mombasa to Malaba is that every county is looking for a piece of pie. It would be easy for us to have the counties; I wish I came for the meeting with the Council of Governors (CoG). I was following it online. Beyond being a club, they should make sure that some of the monies can be collected centrally so that you do not have a business man paying rates for 10 counties and 17 licences. You do not have a businessperson having to deal with different standards of counties because his vehicle is passing through there. The issue of revenue on the audit has been brought out well, but we need to emphasise on how we bake a bigger cake and consolidate. Governors have been unrealistically projecting how much they will get in terms of revenue collection. Beyond that, I would like to encourage our county assemblies to take the reports we are passing and look at them critically. They are the first point of oversight. It is our county assemblies that are a frontier. We play a role of secondary oversight beyond the county assemblies. They need to do their work instead of lobbying with governors and playing politics. We have a lot of beautiful legislators in our county assemblies. I was at the Nairobi City County Assembly when the debated the BBO report, I was embarrassed to tell them that they would put to shame a lot of their own Members of Parliament in The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}