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"id": 1127015,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1127015/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Buuri, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Mugambi Rindikiri",
"speaker": {
"id": 13315,
"legal_name": "Mugambi Murwithania Rindikiri",
"slug": "mugambi-murwithania-rindikiri-2"
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"content": "There is a lot of focus on agriculture, climate change, health care and capacity building. These are essential activities that need to be done through the grants. However, just like my colleagues have stated, we have a lot of problems in accounting for the grants. One condition that is given from the World Bank or the national Government on the construction of counties headquarters… For many years, a lot of money has been allocated for the construction of infrastructure in county governments’ headquarters, and that defeats logic. Just as we know, we come from constituencies within counties that are sub-counties’ headquarters. What has happened is that county headquarters have developed more compared to sub-county headquarters. The Senate needs to address the construction aspect of county headquarters through grants. It needs to be devolved to sub-county headquarters. Great concern is the use of grants for capacity building. How do you account for capacity building? We all come from counties. For a long time, I have not seen county programmes for capacity building. That is a weakness that the Senate needs to address. What kind of capacity building are we talking about? If you check the grant given for health services, there are few capacity building items in it. The same case applies for the climate change grant. That is a serious concern for this country and that is where many counties have failed. Having an organised tree planting session per day in a certain area does not translate to addressing totally climate change. What we are lacking in some of the counties is identification of clear programmes that grants need to address. There is a problem in accounting for grants. The use of funds by counties needs to be strictly followed to the letter. We have been talking about grants for many years. It is high time, before we proceed with giving more grants to the counties, they accounted, either in terms of finances or outcomes, of the grants. We need to have some amendments because there is no model in the Bill that shows how this fund is going to be managed other than that money will be released to county revenue offices. The Bill does not tell us how and where the money will be used. If we use the model of the NG-CDF, we will state the project, its location and estimates, and then we have a monitoring and evaluation programme. That is missing in the Bill. Instead of the Senate putting more emphasis on the oversight in the Bill, the Bill is only talking about giving out money and how it will be released. I have seen a schedule that shows where and how much money is going to be used, but it is not telling us how the money will be accounted for at the end of the 2021/2022 Financial Year. At the end of the financial year, they will ask for more grants in the following 2022/2023 Financial Year. We cannot continue to encourage grants from the national Government or from the development partners without seeing tangible results from the grants that have been previously given. One area of concern is healthcare. There is only one county level 5 hospital that is given priority. We have sub-county hospitals and dispensaries that have no medicine and essential services. There is a problem. There is a level 4 hospital in my constituency called Timau, which does not have an x-ray, maternity and casualty facilities. One has to travel for, for example, 50 kilometres to the district headquarters that are funded by grants. So, if the Senate and county governments are serious, they need to have the grants going direct to the grassroots and not only ending up at the headquarters. I support the Bill with reservations. I will work with my colleagues to bring amendments to this Bill."
}