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{
    "id": 1231973,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1231973/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 362,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Oburu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 194,
        "legal_name": "Oburu Ngona Odinga",
        "slug": "oburu-odinga"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, the difficulties which we have in our country are not made by ourselves. It is because we are living in a global village where events which are happening in other countries also affect events happening in our own country. I think the some of the reasons we are where we are because of our own making, but some of them, are because of the world economic situation. This has put our country in some kind of emergency. Mr. Speaker, when one is in in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), we do not apply ordinary measures to treat as if you are treating normal malaria. We use measures which are required to resuscitate the patient so that the patient can come up and be alive. I am saying this because we are suffering and yet we are behaving as if things are very normal in our country. The cash crunch that we have in our economy and the high cost of living our people are going through need some emergency measures. For instance, we remove subsidies and believe that we do not want to subsidize consumption. We want to subsidize production. Those are in normal times. Subsidies are just temporary measures to get the patient out of the ICU. Whether we like it or not, somehow, they will have to be reintroduced in a temporary manner so that even though they are not sustainable, we shall remove them at a later stage once we have come out of this serious situation. Mr. Speaker, at the very beginning, when we were discussing this Division of Revenue Bill, we do not want to mention about the report of the Committee on Finance and Budget. The amendments suggested by that Committee are necessary for us to comfortably support this Bill. It is necessary because when you look at the sharable revenue from the National Treasury, the increase from the previous projected revenues, is Kshs379.2 billion. The proposed increment to KshsS385billion for the counties is only a four per cent increment. First, it is not reflecting the rate of inflation. When we do not reflect inflation, it means we are reducing the allocation to the counties, which is very serious. We must consider that Kshs15billion is only four per cent. This is not acceptable. I also want to agree that the counties are not using the revenue allocated to them properly and we should take more measures. We should control, supervise and oversight what they are doing. However, we are not given that facilitation. Mr. Speaker, I think the corruption, which is devolved corruption in the counties, is because the counties are emulating what is happening up here. What is happening up here is almost official corruption and you can see it in appointments, on the way the government is behaving in even creating positions which are illegal and non-existent. The counties emulate what is happening and they also continue to reap the resources. We need to take more measures to control them. We need to deal with corruption up here before we start tackling corruption in the counties. I know that the national Government is giving excuse that they bear the brunt or the cost of non-collection collection of the revenues. This might be true but whereas they bear the brunt, they are also responsible for non-collection of revenue. How do you appoint somebody who has some cases to do with the income tax already in court to be the ones responsible for collection of revenue? You are not serious about collecting revenue. You cannot, because of your own inefficiencies in collection of"
}