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{
    "id": 1245432,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1245432/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 146,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, what are the eventual recommendations of the Committee? I see a deletion of the Second Schedule of the Bill, setting out recurrent expenditure ceiling for the various county assemblies and the county executives and substituting it with a new one. Of course, I want to believe that this is in reaction to the one that came to you and there is good justification. In fact, as Senate, county assemblies are our brothers and sisters, or they are our twin institutions. Without proper county assemblies, you cannot have a successful implementation of devolution. A question was brought here by Sen. Cherargei yesterday and we all made our contributions about what is happening in our county assemblies, thanks to what the SRC has done. Listening in on the good ideas that were being shared by colleague Senators yesterday, Sen. (Prof) Tom Ojienda pointed out to us - we all agree with him - that paying the Members of the County Assembly well is not enough to empower that institution of the county assembly. Perhaps, it is time that the Senate also led in this conversation in ensuring that what is it that we expect of each of our 47 county assemblies and what will be the costing to ensure that the MCAs are able to carry out their oversight responsibility without having to incur personal expenditure. When they go to inspect projects, what tools are we providing to these county assemblies, in terms of personnel and the knowledge and skills that they need to check? Many a times, if you expect an MCA to read through the bill of quantities, look at a bridge and say that it is in compliance with what the state department expected of a road or a bridge; that is expecting too much. You need professionals to do this job and we can build the capacity of our county assemblies by ensuring that there is a mechanism of checking. Otherwise, it is like an internal audit department of any organization. You expect them to read and go through all these proposals. I know that there are a number of my colleagues who would like to make contributions because this is a very important Bill. I will just make my last point. There is a proposal that within 90 days of the tabling of this report, county assemblies need to submit it to the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA). Why the CRA alone and not to the Senate as well? They need to submit a copy to this House as well because we check on the operations of the county governments which includes the county assemblies. Let them file if it was possible and this is something that we can amend later on when we meet as a committee. As they file with the CRA, perhaps a copy needs to be filed with this House so that we can see how many are not in compliance with this resolution that this House passed in 2021 on the number of members in each of the respective county assembly committee, the purpose of monitoring compliance with guidelines on committee composition. Sen. (Prof.) Tom Ojienda mentioned to us yesterday that in his county assembly you will find a particular member serving in 15 committees. You will have to be a magician to be effective if you are serving in all those committees."
}