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{
    "id": 1158951,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1158951/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 191,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I will also try and be brief like the rest of my colleagues. This is a big win for the Senate especially those that have walked this journey from as early as 2016. This is when the discussion about what to do with conditional and non-conditional grants happened. It was first raised by our Committee. I have mentioned this in many occasions in the course of the last few days. This is because it is a special moment for us, especially members of the Senate Committee on Finance and Budget. The first time that we were ever requested to grant anything outside the Division of Revenue Bill was when we had five counties that did not have either the provincial or district headquarters. We had counties like Nyandarua, Lamu and three others that I cannot recall of the top of my head, that did not have any place to call a county headquarters. Unfortunately, as is often the case in Kenya, when you give the National Treasury an inch, they will take a mile and run with it. Therefore, over time, conditional grants became so popular to the point that as early as 2017, when petitioners went to court and wanted to find out what is the place of these grants, either conditional or un-conditional in our Constitution, the figure was increasing. The biggest thing that worried many of us was the fact that there was no known formula of how these monies were being allocated to the various counties. In fact, if you looked keenly - I dare say this - many of them were either political consideration or goodies that were being dished out. Many of us complained that in the place of conditional and non-conditional grants, perhaps, it would have been better for us to implement the Equalization Fund that is set out in our Constitution, yet that was not done as well. When Sen. Kibiru led us as a Committee to consider this Bill, of course, as a further mitigation because the courts had already pronounced itself on this particular matter, we undertook this assignment with the seriousness it deserved. There was a battle with our colleagues in the National Assembly who wanted to reduce and water it down. The most fundamental change they wanted to make to the County Governments Grants Bill, which to us was the life and heart of it, was to make it a once in a lifetime provision, where once we pass it, there will be a formula for determination and that was the end of the story. That was not the feeling of many of us. If you read the submissions by the Controller of Budget (CoB), the Council of Governors (CoG) and many other right-minded institutions, you will find that they agreed with us. They said that cannot be the case. We have to do it on a yearly basis because many conditional and unconditional grants are done on a need basis. Once a specific need has been addressed, then there was no need for that particular grant to be given."
}