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{
    "id": 1075805,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1075805/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 401,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "The question is; where did the Kshs80 billion go to? That is the elephant in the room. If you sum the total allocations and to divide that by the number of wards, you will realize that something is amiss in most of our county governments. The amount that we are approving today will be added on top of the own source revenue that is collected from mama mboga, mama samaki and mama sweet potato. Let us make sure that we, as a Senate, come up with proactive approaches to oversight that money. That is one of the proposals in the BBI Bill that I really favour because it will allow the Senate to oversight own source revenue. At the moment, one would argue that the Senate has only got responsibility over the Kshs7.8 billion that we are allocating. We resolved in the past that we have to oversight the own source revenue. I am also glad that there will be a separate Bill for conditional grants. I hope that the accountability mechanism for conditional grants have been clearly defined. The National Treasury is imperial and we have said much about how it is frustrating counties but let us remember that they have disbursed at least 80 per cent. County treasuries are also extremely imperial. That is why they are controlling county assemblies and that is why in some counties such as mine, centralization of the county treasury has led to frustration of line departments. Those departments are unable to execute anything unless they lick the boots of the person sitting at the county treasury. We need to decongest that. I actually blame us for coming up with a law that put too much influence on the county treasury. I support this Bill but we need to follow this up with a proactive oversight mechanism. The Senate has played its role today and it has sent money. It has approved a formula, the county assemblies will approve the budgets and Treasury will release funds. Let the Governor of Homa Bay tell us how much of that Kshs80 billion plus has gone to Gembe, Kanyaluo, Wang’chieng’, Kanyamwa, Kabuoch and the other 40 wards. After eight years, we expect each and every corner of the county and each and every sector to enjoy the fruits of devolution. I congratulate the committee led by Sen. Kibiru and I urge the other Members to contribute to this extremely important mandate of the Senate. This is the only Bill that we are required, by the Constitution, to originate. The other bills can come from elsewhere. This is the most sacrosanct duty that we have as a Senate."
}