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{
"id": 1292106,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1292106/?format=api",
"text_counter": 224,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Mwaruma",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13223,
"legal_name": "Johnes Mwashushe Mwaruma",
"slug": "johnes-mwashushe-mwaruma"
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for this opportunity to contribute to this important Bill. This is the best way of dispensing with county additional allocations because previously, conditional grants were appropriated through the National Assembly. Today, we can track these monies through this Bill. For example, my County has money from development partners totalling to Kshs1.3 billion. We also have money for conditional allocations to country governments from mineral royalties totalling Kshs51.7 million, cash that was not there in the past. We would like to laud the Ministry of Petroleum and Mining for making it possible for counties to share mineral royalties because previously, we had been told that it was not possible to share these royalties because regulations were not there then. I am happy that the current Cabinet Secretary has made it possible for us to benefit from these resources. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we also have grants from the national Government totalling to Kshs110,638,298 and we also have leasing medical equipment totalling to Kshs124,723,404.30. We have money for conditional grants for provision of fertilizer subsidies totalling Kshs43.4 million. The problem of these conditional grants, just like in the problems of shareable revenue, is not the taking of the money to counties, but it is how to oversight this money. If you look at the money for leasing medical equipment totalling Kshs124 million for Taita Taveta and this is not the first time my County is getting money for Managed Equipment Scheme (MES), my County is still low on provision of healthcare. We do not have even a single Intensive Care Unit (ICU) despite the fact that we have been getting MES. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the problem has been oversight. Where does this money sink to? The Senate is only expected to wait for the CoB’s and OAG’s reports for us to find out where the Auditor-General finds fault. However, if at all we will get the money for oversight, then we would be able to go down and lay our own infrastructure to make sure that we oversight this money. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, if you look at this money, for example, Kshs21 million for livestock value chain support project, this is very little money. Taita Taveta is endowed with a lot of land, about 1.4 million acres available for ranching for the rangelands. If you give us Kshs21 million only for value addition for livestock, this is a paltry sum, but it is a good beginning. Perhaps, it is something that we can begin with. If I look at the Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) or the World Bank grants meant to increase market participation and value addition for targeted farmers totalling to Kshs255 million, this is quite an amount of money for my county. Nonetheless, again the problem is the wastage that happens in the county for lack of proper oversight. I have been experiencing for the last six years a lot of loss of these funds because when they are appropriated and they go to implement the ward projects, the ward administrators that is the MCAs, connive with the suppliers and supply air. I was told of a story where these grants were used to supply farmyard manure. For each lorry that was supplying, it was divided into three and counted as one. So, if you supply 50 lorries of farmyard manure, they were being counted as 150 because it is times 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."
}