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{
    "id": 1268651,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1268651/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 296,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 170,
        "legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
        "slug": "bonny-khalwale"
    },
    "content": "colleague. You are supposed to go and sit with him in the Committee and see how you organise the finance. Members of Parliament do not know and need to be guided. The same Member of Parliament was speaking when he controls Kshs140 million from the National Government-Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF). He is free to construct eight classrooms if he wishes, be they normal classrooms or storey buildings and avoid the embarrassment of looking up to a man, who is a Chairman of a committee, like he is his senior to provide him with money for development. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, Clause 6 of the Bill speaks to the obligations that this Bill will give county governments. I am very excited because the principles include the protection of the rights of the consumers of the respective counties. As I said, due to lack of these guidelines and principles, anything goes, including the real and imagined. This Bill will ensure that the quality of goods produced and services delivered are of the highest standard. Finally, the Bill will ensure that the licensing fees imposed by county governments are not only uniform, but are imposed with respect to the licenses, are not prohibitive and do not hinder the conduct of doing business. A country like Rwanda where business people and businesses are not hindered are moving faster than us, the giants of this region. There is no reason a Kenyan would want to benchmark on anything in Rwanda. However, I am starting to see committees and even some Cabinet Secretaries going to Kigali in the name of wanting to see how things are done. This should never be the case. With all due respect, they are our good neighbours and a friendly country. They are very small. You cannot compare Kigali or Rwanda – the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nairobi County is bigger than the GDP of the Republic of Rwanda. Since we are not taking it seriously, we hear people saying that they want to go and benchmark in Rwanda. Benchmark on what? The reason Kigali looks better is because they are managing corruption. They are controlling it. Here in Nairobi, the Governor of Nairobi has no excuse whatsoever why he should ever delay paying salaries or fail to equip all the health facilities in his county in the name of the National Treasury having not released money. He should never wait because he has the capacity of creating own source revenue in amounts that can even allow him to be the one lending to the national Government. As we say these things, let it not look like we are trying to reinvent the wheel. There are many places where devolution works well in the world, but the country I love is Belgium. In Belgium, the devolved governments have more money than the Federal Government. The Federal Government relies on the devolved governments to help it to be more efficient. Why would somebody want to be the Governor of Nairobi when they have no idea that they will be controlling an economy bigger than the economy of Rwanda? Therefore, what do you do to unlock that economy? This is the House. We must demand performance from governors, and that performance should go beyond just them showing us how they pay salaries. Devolution was not about creating units as employment bureaus. Devolution was about unlocking the economic potentials of all 47 counties of Kenya. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard Services,Senate."
}