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{
    "id": 1161375,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1161375/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 214,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Olekina",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 407,
        "legal_name": "Ledama Olekina",
        "slug": "ledama-olekina"
    },
    "content": "did not have work plans, or did not factor in the issues of COVID-19 in their budgets, county governments ended up delaying the utilization of those funds. When the county governments appeared before us, the Auditor-General had already raised the concern that the county governments did not utilize these funds. They said that they could not utilise the funds without proper work plans for those who did not utilize them. Others utilized them without going through the procedures. Others said they did not subscribe to a particular rule and had to follow the rules of the donors. From what I hear from the two colleagues who commended Sen. Farhiya who seconded the Motion and Sen. Omogeni who contributed to this Motion, it is imperative that the officers and governors should be people of impeachable characters. Madam Deputy Speaker, this is why sometimes I believe that if you have failed in one particular docket, why should you transfer your corruption to another docket? Today, there are so many governors who want to become Senators, but they have failed in delivering services to their people. If they could not even manage COVID-19 funds, so they want to come here and interrogate those reports? I have to say it was an oversight on our part, that we did not invite the Auditor- General and the other independent institutions such as the EACC. Sen. Omogeni alluded to this when he was contributing. This was because of the challenges that we had when we were inviting these governors. In fact, some governors were apprehensive. Some said they did not need to appear before us. They questioned how they could appear before the Committee on Health and again before the CPAIC the following day. Yet this was specific to the Committee on Health because we were actually dealing on our mandate. The issue where they were apprehensive and reluctant to appear before the Committee was because of lack of vision to ensure that by the time they are leaving the office, they would have done their bit satisfactorily. You can be accused of so many things, but do not let yourself be accused of not having taken care of your citizens’ health. It is true what Sen. Omogeni has said, that most of us – if not all – spend billions of shillings sending our citizens to other countries for medical treatment. Sometimes if you ask those who do so, they will tell you it is because the private hospitals here are in the business of making money. Public hospitals and the health function being devolved was supposed to help the people, but they are not helping. This is true. Sen. Omogeni said that many hospitals do not have drugs. You are given a prescription and then directed to a private pharmacy to buy those drugs which were supposed to have been dispensed from public hospitals. The Auditor-General pointed out that these drugs did not reach where they were supposed to reach. I appreciate the comments of my colleagues. If the term of this Parliament ends without our Committee following up on these matter with the governors, I hope that the subsequent Parliament will follow through to ensure that at least the recommendation of these reports are implemented. We spend a lot of public money to go through call those governors and go through these reports. Every time a governor comes before this Committee, they come with their whole office. Sometimes they spend two or three nights here. They also spend a lot of money trying to make sure that everything goes well the way they want. That is"
}