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{
    "id": 1291342,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1291342/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 252,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "for the results from the Auditor General at the end of a financial year to say what happened. We want our reports promptly and nothing stops her. When we eventually meet her, we will demand that she does not have to bring those long expensive copies. Our Government is talking about austerity measures to save on cost. Send me the statement of the county Government operations to my WhatsApp. I have no business demanding that it be in a hard copy. I am the only Senator of Kericho after all. They know me and my phone number. Let me have that report in a prompt manner without any due consideration to Government protocols so that I know the amount being released and how it is spent. Two days ago, at the National Dialogue Committee (NDC), I took to task the Council of Governors (CoG) who appeared before us. I have another report that I will be sharing with Members in the next two weeks. Hon. Members, do you know that all our 47 county governments are in violation of Schedule 25 of our Regulations on Expenditure? There is not a single county that is spending more than 20 per cent on development. All of them spend about 15 per cent and we are just seated here as Senators. I have invited the CoB. I have told her that she must appear before a Committee of the Whole of the entire Senate. Senators want to know why she is allowing counties to spend over and above legislative determinations that have already been made; the 70/30 principle. That principle was put there for a reason. We know very well that the easiest way with which you can pilfer resources is through recurrent expenditures. This is because there are small things like fuel, printing, paying so and so and all these funny programmes that county governors are running. You find a governor running with mattresses, chicken and whatnot under recurrent vote saying they have brought this donation. That is why none of them is at 35 per cent. Very few are above 25 per cent. Most of them and sadly, for your information Senators, are below 20 per cent. This is a worrying trend that we must begin to question as Senate. We must demand from the CoB and ask, what is it that my county Kericho, your county Sen. Osotsi and the rest, determine? Let your governor appear before us and file a recovery plan. I believe the reason why, for example, the national Government is in the financial and debt distress that we find ourselves in as a country is because of managing our resources the way counties are beginning to operate. People imagine that as long as this is Government, somehow money will always be found. They do not want to run it prudently knowing that resources are finite. That somehow, they must have an end. Sen. Thang’wa has just spoken about how many of our counties continuously inflate their own source revenue with the simple motivation of growing their development budget. This is so that at the end of it, they can procure, take the 10 per cent and never pay those contractors. There is absolutely nobody in their right mind right now in this county who can seek to be a county contractor unless the governor is their relative. Otherwise, any ordinary contractor knows, that the minute you conclude that job, you begin even a more difficult one of trying to get paid. Many times, they will never be paid. People have been auctioned."
}