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{
    "id": 1066507,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1066507/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 225,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Kamar",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 33,
        "legal_name": "Margaret Jepkoech Kamar",
        "slug": "margaret-kamar"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. Who is going to oversight when we move 35 per cent to the counties? That is why we must quickly come up with a way in which we cause an amendment to make this the Upper House that it should be and ensure there is oversight. Thirty-five per cent of any country’s resources is a very high figure. Secondly, to me, the expansion of Senate to 94 Senators is very important. For 35 percent of the revenue of this country to be shared equitably, we must have 35 per cent of representation inside this House. Ninety four Members will not even be 35 per cent. Removing Women Representatives and creating seats in the Senate, to me, has done the balance of gender, but the most important is the amount of resources that are here. Those resources must be dealt with properly together with our governance. The third reason, which I find very important, is the Ward Development Fund (WDF). We have had issues with governors in this House as per the audit reports we have received. We have even had governors coming before us and seen how funds are being misused in this country. The worst situation is when there is internal imbalance in a county. We have just talked about imbalance of development in the whole country, but we have also observed it within the counties. I was very fortunate to have been a consultant for the Council of Governors (CoG) and the Transition Authority (TA) in the five years, when the Constitution had just been enacted in the first Senate. My observation, which is still current, was that there was a lot of imbalance within the counties as far as development was concerned. For us to deal with that, having a WDF is the most important cure. In the last Legislative Forum, we listened to Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) and Speakers from counties requesting that we develop the funding to the wards. All they told us was that there was a lot of imbalance within the county itself. A governor looks at the ward that elected him more favourably than the one that did not, and yet the resources belong to the whole county. That is my third point that I believe should deal with unequitable development in the country. Even if we redistribute 50 per cent of the resources to the counties, the worst is when there is imbalance within the county. When that happens, it degenerates to imbalance of development. We will come back here and our wards will not be as developed as others. 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."
}