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{
    "id": 1232721,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1232721/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 142,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wamatinga",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13582,
        "legal_name": "Wahome Wamatinga",
        "slug": "wahome-wamatinga"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I also rise to support. We know that the county governments form one of the political units at the grassroots level. The devolved units in the last ten years have been able to achieve life changing economic empowerment in the communities to the local counties. In absence of misappropriation and mismanagement of the funds allocated to the county governments, Kenya would be quite far in terms of community development. We should also note with a lot of concern that there are very many resources, as alluded to by the Senator of Turkana, that are shared between counties. For example, where I come from in Nyeri County, we had the biggest Provincial Hospital that continues to serve several counties in the Mount Kenya region. However, when it comes to the allocation of resources, it is left on the shoulders of Nyeri County to carry and incur all the costs that go with it. Moving forward, it will be important for this House to start looking at those services that are shared among counties. They should come up with a formula for how they will ensure that when we are allocating funds and resource revenue to the county governments, that is taken into consideration. It ends up overstretching the resources of one county, while the others enjoy the services that they do not pay for. It is also important for this House, moving forward, to start looking at possibilities of how we can enact and bring into place a legislative framework that will support the county governments to raise their own-source revenue. I remember when I was living and working in Europe, specifically in Germany, there was in every employee’s tax deduction, what they used to call --- That is a tax that was deducted from every employee working in a particular area. That money was allocated to the area that you worked in. The rationale behind it is that you enjoy the services, infrastructure and other services provided by that particular region. Maybe it is something that we should borrow from. This is because, we see some counties, despite receiving billions of money over the last ten years, cannot see the impact of the same. Why? For example, on the library service, which is a devolved function, some counties do not have that service at all. It will not be easy for the county to start that service on its own, unless we come up with a plan on how that can be done, so that we bring all counties almost to the same level. It is also important as we are discussing the Division of Revenue Bill (DORB) in this House that we also be honest with ourselves. The issue of the pending bills is one of the elephants in the House. Some of them, especially in counties that have changed governors a couple of times, we find that the successive governments do not want to pay the bills left behind by their predecessors. The law states that the pending bills must be the first charge. We must get ways and means of enforcing that, as the Senate, so that the entrepreneurs who provide services to the county governments are not forced to carry the burden. Equally, as we were having this debate, I noted with a lot of concern that without pointing either side of the House, some of our colleagues would stand up and say that we need to add this or that. I believe that it is the effectiveness of how that money is spent. We know that the previous regime gave money in the budget that was eventually not"
}