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{
    "id": 1216806,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1216806/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 87,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kiharu, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Ndindi Nyoro",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Two concerns the medium to long-term drought mitigation. When I talk about drought mitigation, it is about storage of water. This is because majority of the farming that we do relies primarily on rain-fed agriculture. We cannot continue to expose our country, especially our food basket areas, to the vagaries of weather. Therefore, with the savings that we had, we made sure that they are directed to agencies that this House has tasked to deal with irrigation matters and other areas around drought mitigation. In that regard, I want to inform this House that there is a critical decision we have to make. There are bodies in Kenya called Regional Development Authorities (RDAs). We know them since they serve our areas. When these bodies were conceptualised, we did not have devolution and water works development agencies. We saw something that is mind-boggling. Some of these RDAs include the Lake Basin Development Authority, Tana and Athi Rivers Development, Ewaso Ng’iro South Development Authority, among others. You will find an agency with a recurrent expenditure of Ksh240 million but their development expenditure is only Ksh20 million a year. We cannot continue to make these kinds of mistakes with regard to making our Budget. We have to make a radical decision as a country that we cannot continue having institutions gobbling Ksh300 million in terms of annual recurrent expenditure and then this House appropriates to them Ksh20 million for development. We need to ask hard questions. We either give them enough money to offer services to the Kenyan people or merge whatever they do to other relevant agencies. There is no way we will continue to have RDAs which have recurrent expenditure of Ksh240 million and development expenditure of Ksh20 million. It does not make sense to us and I am sure to this House too."
}