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{
    "id": 1093987,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1093987/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 116,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Halake",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13184,
        "legal_name": "Abshiro Soka Halake",
        "slug": "abshiro-soka-halake"
    },
    "content": "counties and communities. From our community lands, forests and conservation, everything seems to be managed from the top. This Bill then pushes things down to be governed by the local communities and benefits to our local communities in the process, therefore, strengthening devolution and our counties and making sure that our resources have a sustainability aspect to them because they are managed, owned and benefitted from by our communities and not some more removed entity, so to speak. I am a bit concerned about the scope and the breadth of the role of the CRA. They seem to have been given quite a lot of work from facilitating, monitoring and implementing benefits, sharing agreements to determining appeals arising from that, to ensuring proper and timely payments of funds to ensuring that they set up other funds. I do not know if they have the capacity or if this Bill contemplates adding the capacity of some of the institutions to which a lot of this work has been given so that we do not overwhelm the institutions that already had a full plate as they do other things. My concern is that the role of the CRA has been expanded many folds and I hope that the Bill will contemplate strengthening their capacity to do all this work. The collection of royalties is being done by the KRA which already has the capacity to collect revenue and already does that but in terms of the role of the CRA, we may want to make sure that we are giving them the right capacity as well. Madam Temporary Speaker, another concern I have is that a lot of times when funds are being developed, they have not really worked in the manner and substance in which they should work. We have the Universal Service Fund that is supposed to take connectivity to hard-to-reach places. It is now in its billions and it has not quite given us the outcomes we had set these funds for. We had the Petroleum Levy Fund. The price of petroleum is going high yet these funds exist. I do not know in this Bill how we are going to make sure that these Funds that we are setting up, the sovereign fund and the future’s fund, that they actually bring forth the outcomes we want and that they serve the counties and the communities in the manner and substance in which it is contemplated in this Bill. That having been said, I think these are good things. We just need to make sure that we are not just repeating the same mistakes we did with the Universal Service Fund, the Petroleum Levy Fund, the Youth Fund and all the different funds that were set up in the past so that we are not just doing the same things and expecting different results. In terms of the sharing of revenue, this Bill is progressive. It includes the monetary benefits that may accrue to the county and the contribution of the affected entity in realizing the same. Each county was supposed to come on board and is supposed to make sure that they establish a County Benefits Sharing Committee. Our counties knowing their capacity, I hope we do have some contemplation of the provisions to ensure that the committees have the requisite capacity to do these things. That having been said, pushing this down to our counties will definitely make sure that we strengthen devolution, strengthen the capacity and provide a framework that is people-run, people-facing and people-owned so to speak. I come from the conservation sector. Seventy to eighty percent of our natural resources, be they forest resources, fauna and flora are hosted by our communities and in our counties. Everything that is accruing goes to the centre. We need to then start"
}