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{
    "id": 1127018,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1127018/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 497,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Likuyani, FORD-K",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) Wamalwa Kibunguchy",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 294,
        "legal_name": "Enoch Wamalwa Kibunguchy",
        "slug": "enoch-kibunguchy"
    },
    "content": "an organised way are coming down to the counties. Just like most of my colleagues have said, there is a lot of reservations in how devolution as a concept has been practiced in this country and how it has evolved over the 10 years. There are many examples that I can quote. Devolution as a concept was meant to do two or three main things. One, just like everybody has said, is to take services close to the people. Let people participate in deciding priorities in their areas. More importantly, devolution was meant to exploit natural resources that are found in different parts of the country. Natural resources are not uniform throughout. There are places where people have natural resources like water, lakes and oceans. What can we exploit from these natural resources to create employment and wealth for our youth? That is not what has happened with devolution in this country. In the end, devolution has tended to be a club that creates employment bureaus. Most of the money that goes to the counties goes towards recurrent expenses like payment of salaries of the bloated workforce. In the process, very little money goes to development. That is why when you walk around, most of what you see in terms of development has been done by the NG-CDF. As I keep saying, we devolved funds from the centre, which is Nairobi, to various counties. When this money gets to county headquarters, most of it is tied up there. Very little trickles down to the wards or sub-counties. That is why you hardly find any development there. As Members of Parliament and lawmakers in this country, I think it is up to us, and probably we will start with this Bill, to see if we can put mechanisms in place so that the people who receive this money are directly accountable. We need to establish rules and parameters so that we do not give individuals a blank cheque at the county level. They should account for the money in the long-run. I would like to speak a little about health. Being a medical doctor, I feel very sad. I feel sad because instead of moving forward and looking at some of the diseases that were being eradicated, we are going back probably to 30 years ago just because we devolved health services to county governments. I think that was the biggest mistake. When history will eventually be written, the biggest mistake we made in this country was to devolve health services. County governments have no capacity to handle health services. If we are going to provide services in this country, and if I may believe some of our big brothers who say that the BBI will come back after elections, I think one of the areas that we are going to push for is to see either the whole of health services or the aspect of human resource, reverting to the national Government. That way, we will have something akin to what is in the teaching profession. We should have a health service commission to handle the human aspects of health. I am sure the intention of leasing medical equipment was noble, but people did not think hard about it. We have a totally skewed distribution of health experts in this country. In some rural areas, you will hardly find nurses that know how to deal with dialysis, yet one of the equipment that were leased was dialysis machines, and they are required in virtually every corner of this country. If we had a centralised commission dealing with human resource, it would have been handled in a better way. We know that at every given time, for example, Likuyani Hospital does not have a nurse that deals with dialysis, that commission would then post one there. What happens is that every county does their own thing. We have reached a level where things that were unheard of some years back are now an everyday thing. Doctors are on strike. Nurses are on strike. Clinical officers are on strike. Laboratory technicians are on strike. They are on strike at different times. Health workers in Kakamega County are on strike while the ones in Kirinyaga County are working. It is like some places are condemned. I wanted to emphasise that bit, being a medical doctor. It is a mistake. Something we must look at again. Health services must be centrally controlled. If we are going to have universal healthcare and make sure that it is implemented uniformly throughout the country, it must be controlled from a central place. It cannot succeed with everybody doing The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}