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{
    "id": 1241236,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1241236/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 310,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "While it is emotive that these different service providers must be paid for their services, it is equally important that you equally hold them accountable. This brings me to another point on why I think the Bill would have been more prolific if you had done segmentation of which kind of service providers you are talking about. For instance, a big contractor who is doing roads in our counties or who is working on Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) does not need to be protected to the extent that they are paid for 30 days. Madam Temporary Speaker, if you are talking about Small Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) or micro enterprises that you segmented on this particular Bill, then you make it possible to have a conversation that is more segmented and more targeted in helping the businesses that are more at risk. By that then, even the idea of bottom up agenda is actually well taken care of. Madam Temporary Speaker, for the Bill to have been more prolific, then perhaps this could be an amendment that I could propose that you have look at the scope of the Bill with regards to where the bulk of the Government spending is. Today, we know that in the national Government, about 63 per cent of the spending goes to recurrent budget that is mostly employees. In counties, about 70 per cent of the money that is spent there is on employees. What does this mean? This means that when you look at things like deductions whereby you want to look at pension deductions or any other deductions that are due; the bulk of the pending bills that we are seeing in counties is actually employee deductions. For instance, we know the Local Authorities Pension Trust (LAPTRUST) as well as county pension fund are owed by counties up to Kshs50 billion. You cannot be able to address that with this kind of Bill because that is also a payment ticket. That is why we need to look at the scope of how we expand this. Therefore, the Bill loses meaning because then you will have more interest put on a small section of total spending of Government vis-a-vis where you should actually be targeting and where we are having more interest that accrued outwards. By the term ‘outwards’, I mean if we have got a pending bill such as the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) deductions and KRA is getting that money from counties in terms of fines and interest. That is what we should be able to cap because the county as well as the national Government will pay for them later. That score---"
}