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{
    "id": 1245422,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1245422/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 136,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "This is the first opportunity I get to read and see County Allocation of Revenue Bill, not as a Member of a Committee, but an ordinary Senator. I want to see it from the perspective of our colleagues who have taken time to listen to the presentations and the request that come from the various county assemblies, which are quite important. This is not a practice that was long established. It is something that we began a few years ago. Otherwise, back in the day, once the Division of Revenue Bill was out of the way, there was very little interest on County Allocation of Revenue Bill. However, with the introduction of ceilings after we amended the Public Finance Management Act in 2019 or 2020, the Committee was empowered to vary the various ceilings for individual county assemblies via the kind of requests that that both Sen. Faki and Sen. Ali Roba were refereeing to. I will quickly move on to the crux of the matter. The Kshs385.425 billion is the amount of money before the Senate. We are being asked to share this equitably among the 47 counties – not equally, but equitably; a word that will take time for many to understand and distinguish. However, this is what separates us and the National Assembly, on many occasions, on matters such as National Government-Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF). The Senate, through its Committees, is able to set out a formula where we can equitably distribute these resources between all our 47 county units; taking into consideration the various dynamics and the difficulties. This country almost split right down the middle. The debate on the “one man, one vote” is still alive. It is the Senate that added the ‘one kilometer’ to the debate. We said that every inch of this country matters to us. That, while it is possible to carry on the dreams and aspirations that come from densely populated counties like yours truly represents, we cannot forget or leave behind those that come from sparsely, yet very expansive counties. We were able to point to the country, at that particular time, that every inch of this country is important. Although, you may feel at this moment in time, for one reason or the other, that particular part of the country is not important to you, eventually you will come to understand that there is a correlation between a thriving Mandera and a thriving Kericho County, which I represent in this House. There are things which if they were to go wrong in Marsabit, Samburu or any of the far-flung counties, have a direct correlation on us as the people of Kericho and Kisumu Counties or whichever part of the country that you come from. Therefore, this Bill is an application of that particular formula. If you read through the Report, the Kshs385.452 is spread out via the table and the Schedule that has been issued together with the Bill. After the work is done, what remains is pretty much plug and play exercise. The minute you have determined the ‘how,’ the bigger question is ‘how much’. Once those two are determined then the other part that our colleagues in the Committee on Finance and Budget had to consider is the various ceilings. I would like to point out that when reading through the Bill, I read through the Report. Of keen interest to me are the various observations that have been proposed before gathering the conclusion of the Committee via the recommendation."
}