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{
    "id": 1130067,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1130067/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 94,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta",
    "speaker_title": "His Excellency the President",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 168,
        "legal_name": "Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta",
        "slug": "uhuru-kenyatta"
    },
    "content": "approximately 787,500 households every year or an average of 2,000 connections a day since 2013. By any measure, this acceleration is noteworthy. Besides access to electricity, my administration has also embarked on implementing the recommendations of the Presidential Taskforce that established a pathway for reduction of the cost of electricity by 30 per cent by the end of this year. Hon. Speaker, we are tearing down all barriers that deny Kenyans an opportunity to lead a dignified life. Now I turn to devolution and how my administration has used the acceleration framework to multiply the economic fundamentals of the counties. As the first President to implement the 2010 Constitution, the task of rolling-out devolution fell squarely on me. Although the letter of the Constitution provided for a phased approach to the devolution of functions to counties, the spirit of the Constitution suggested an urgent “big bang” approach in creating the devolved structures. This meant giving county government’s political, administrative and financial autonomy all at once. We were to do this without the luxury of a strategy dry run to determine whether this “big bang” approach would work. Fortunately, Article 187 of the Constitution gave us three years to execute this constitutional instruction. While three years was a fair period to achieve the “big bang” effect of transferring functions to fragile counties, my administration chose an even bolder path. Driven by our acceleration doctrine, we chose to transfer functions to the county structures in one year instead of the constitutional threshold of three years. And because we were committed to the success of the county structures, we followed our accelerated devolution of functions with two critical drivers. One, we undertook a massive transfer of highly skilled civil servants from the national government to the county governments. This battery of highly trained personnel was meant to give the county governments a head start. And they did so in terms of setting up the county public services, including their operating structures and systems. Two, within the first year of my tenure, my administration increased the equitable share allocation to county governments from the constitutionally mandated 15 per cent to 32 per cent. This was a doubling of allocation in support of the execution of the devolved dream. And we did this because we understood and appreciated that devolution of functions without ‘devolution of funding’ was an exercise in futility. Today, the National Government has disbursed approximately Ksh2.44 trillion to county governments over the last eight years. The aggregate amount that will have been disbursed to the counties for the next financial year is therefore projected to surpass the Ksh.3 Trillion mark. The aggregate of the amount we have committed to our counties is almost equivalent to our current national budget. And taking all things constant, this amount approximates the budgets of the first and the second independence administrations, combined. In other words, for the last 8 years, we have percolated to the counties what the entire Republic operated with for a period of close to 39 years. But how has this percolation of resources changed the economic fundamentals at the county level? How has it fast-tracked the embeddedness of devolved functions in 8 years? Evidence abounds on this, but I will give a few examples at hand. Accelerated devolution has, for instance, delivered shoes with a magical label “Made by Kitui County, Kenya” and given Makueni County its first mango processing plant. Makueni County received Ksh110 million from the Devolution Advice and Support programme. This money supported the processing plant and benefitted 12,000 mango farmers by creating value addition. The plant is now buying one mango at 15 shillings from farmers who previously sold their produce in the open market place at 5 shillings at the very best price or more often than not, left the mangos to rot away. Their income has grown ten-fold and provided ground for their farming undertakings to take-off. Makueni is also on record as being one of the counties with a capacity to manufacture its own oxygen, especially in the context of COVID- 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."
}