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{
    "id": 1134256,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1134256/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 62,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker Sir, I would be interested if one day, we could get a conditional grant for counties like Makueni, Homa Bay, Busia and others that were producing cotton in the past to help them revive that sector. It is a much tidier approach to development than calling the President to your region and then over dinner you beg him to bring Government resources to those areas. However, how do those requests find their way into the Conditional Grants Bill? Right now, we do not have a framework and so every senator is left to guess and lobby the National Treasury for that. The second thing I want to speak to which is very specific to county governments is on pending bills. When the first crop of governors left office, the new crop of governors refused to pay the bills that were left behind by those governors. To date, some counties suppliers and contractors have not been paid. People have been auctioned and others have died miserable deaths while others, their children have had to drop out of school. Every time there is a change of administration, the new government talks about setting up a taskforce which is expensive. It does two things; it kills the contractors who are seen to have been sympathetic to the former governor and it also introduces some ghost and phony contracts and bills for those associated with the incoming governor. Mr. Speaker, Sir, this has been a charade. A few months before the former Auditor-General, Edward Ouko, left office, he did a thorough audit and he submitted his report to the County Public Accounts Committee and Investment Committee (CPAIC). I was charing it at that point. We made a decision that those bills that were found to be legitimate by the Auditor-General should have been paid off. Then, the governors went back to Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council (IBEC) and decided to set up another verification taskforce. After that, each government went ahead to set up their own verification taskforces. To date, legitimate suppliers are yet to be paid four, five years down the line. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the position of the Committee on Devolution and Inter- Governmental Relations is as follows, that in the next session, we will talk to the National Treasury to invoke Article 225(3) of the Constitution with respect to stoppage of finances to counties that do not have a plan for payment of pending bills. Mr. Speaker, Sir, Sen. Kiburu brought a Motion to this House to that effect. I recall that the Motion could have been approved by the House, but implementation has not been done. If debt is a first charge on the finances of any public entity, then that huge pending bill that we are seeing in this report must be made to be a first charge. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the sad thing is that even as we advocate that we give county governments more money, it is money that is going to get into that deep endless hole"
}