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"id": 1292107,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1292107/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Mwaruma",
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"speaker": {
"id": 13223,
"legal_name": "Johnes Mwashushe Mwaruma",
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"content": "three. So, you must place adequate infrastructure to oversight the way these funds are used. I would like to say that the problem is the MCAs because the structure is not okay to oversight the county assembly and they have been crying that they want to be made autonomous. So, when the county executive is implementing the projects, but then there are no reports coming to the county assembly in good time, for example, the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) stipulates that, “every three months there should be reports from the county executive to the county assembly.” When these reports are not given to the county assembly, there is nothing much that is done to the county executive. However, when the county assembly, sometimes tries to impeach on the strength of lack of those reports, then at the Senate level we would talk about threshold. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I heard the Controller of Budget (CoB) also lamenting that this issue is not only prevalent in the county assemblies, it is also there in the other Ministries, departments and agencies. So, I do not know how we can amend the PFMA, so that we criminalize this issue of not supplying documents in good time. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, if the Senate Oversight Fund comes to fruition, I think we should set a structure so that when the executive of the counties gives documents or the quarterly reports to the county assembly and they give the copies to the office of the CoB, then, some of those reports are brought to the Senate for scrutiny. We can have adequate staff to look at those documents, so that we can deal with that oversight in real time, other than waiting for the money to be stolen, then wait for the Auditor-General’s report to come and do post-mortem for somebody who died a long time ago. I am happy that we are taking this money to the counties. However, it is disheartening to note that most of this money will go to waste. As Sen. Wafula has clearly stated, we are taking a lot of money in terms of the MES money. However, if you look at our hospitals or the state of our medicare, it is still in deplorable condition. For instance, in my County of Taita/Taveta, we do not even a CT scan and the basic materials of pharmaceuticals to make sure that our people are able to access quality medicare. So, what we do, we go to the neighbouring counties of Makueni that is Makindu and Mombasa where we take all our revenue there. Then some of our people go to Tanzania, that is Moshi Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC). If this money is well used and with the passage of the FIF law that we passed the other time, I can assure you that if the leased medical equipment scheme is well used, then our hospitals can be used as a source of revenue that will then make sure that our people get quality health services. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I am very happy today as a Senator that we were able to benefit from royalties from the minerals at an amount that is about in the excess of Kshs51 million. However, I know if we were to be serious as the people of Taita Taveta, we should have earned much more money than this Kshs51 million. There are people who have become billionaires because of mining in Taita Taveta County both at the ranches and in the national park. If we had a good mechanism of 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."
}