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{
    "id": 1078363,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1078363/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 487,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kinangop, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Zachary Thuku",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13380,
        "legal_name": "Zachary Kwenya Thuku",
        "slug": "zachary-kwenya-thuku"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to speak to this Bill on county allocation of revenue. At the outset, I state that I support the Bill because this is going to make sure that our counties get their allocation for the coming financial year of about Kshs370 billion from the National Treasury. In the same breath, I also want to recognise that there is so much that has been done by our county governments because we need to be people who appreciate ourselves. At times, we are very hard on ourselves. We do not want to see any good and in fact in the spirit of devolution, this is what we wanted to see. As much as much needs to be done, we must appreciate that, that much has been done and if the National Treasury was effective or kind enough to be disbursing money to the counties in time, I believe much more would have been achieved. In fact, the biggest impediment to development in our counties is not just county governors. That is because, anyway, we have an oversight mechanism whereby county governors are supposed to be held to account by the county assemblies. Secondly, we have the Office of the Auditor-General which is supposed to flag out issues of misappropriation. We have institutions like the EACC and the Controller of Budget, which are supposed to work in tandem and in unison so that they see that our counties deliver as is expected of them by our citizens. This allocation of Kshs370 billion is becoming a big debate, but we are also forgetting that our counties generate income through the revenues that they collect through levies, licences and things like that. It is never seen to be accounted for. The public do not have a feel of the monies that they pay in terms of those levies. Therefore, maybe, the Senate should come up with a mechanism whereby every county should publish the kind of monies that they collect. We have had some inefficient systems of manual collection of revenue through cess, levies that are collected from our farmers and the production that comes from the counties, especially sand, stones and such things. The monies are collected manually. So, there is likelihood of pilferage. It is a lot of money. If that money is put in rightful use, then it can supplement or compliment the monies that they are getting from the Exchequer. Our county governors must be tasked to account for the monies that they are receiving. In accounting, the budget-making process should be our priority and the priority of the Senate, even as they oversight our counties. You find that our governors and the executive in the county government are allocating so much money for what I would call social handouts, in the name of social welfare. You see, the drafters of the Constitution envisaged a situation where the county government would come in handy. They drafted Article 43 of the Constitution to empower people and to bring about economic social rights. But now the county governments are giving handouts with a focus of hoodwinking the citizenry to vote for them in the coming elections. We cannot have our tax money being given out to buy blankets and mattresses at will, even when there is very little to do so. I am opposed to these handouts because they are just handouts of food stuffs, gas cylinders and such stuff. We should have a situation where the county governments are empowering our people economically so that they can produce and be in a position to procure the blankets, gas cylinders and things like that, as opposed to the handouts that they are giving, so that we can get value for our money."
}