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{
    "id": 1380151,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1380151/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 331,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sifuna",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13599,
        "legal_name": "Sifuna Edwin Watenya",
        "slug": "sifuna-edwin-watenya"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. I also thank the Chairperson of the Committee on County Public Investments Committee (CPIC) for the honour of seconding the Motion. I assure Sen. Olekina that I will only take five minutes. It is the American gangster Al Capone who said that you should not mistake his kindness for weakness. This Senate needs to get tougher on governors because they have heard Sen. Sifuna and others are strongly pro-devolution and that we will defend devolution every single day. They have started taking advantage of our kindness, even showing us a lot of what we call madharau in the streets of Nairobi. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, this is another opportunity for us to demonstrate to these governors that they cannot be coming to the Senate to cry for us to defend and give them resources but poor pensioners, the people retired from county governments, are not receiving their pensions and the pension funds are not receiving remittances. This is because counties have refused to remit the money. I strongly agree with the suggestions that have been made by the Committee here. I wonder why Sen. Osotsi and the Committee went for a task force that will buy these county governments more time. I am in strong support of the recommendations by Sen. Osotsi that we need to deduct this money at the source the way the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) does and governors will come and cry here. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I have seen on page 20 of the Report that counties are blaming the non-remittance of money from the Exchequer and that is why they are not remitting money to the pension fund. That would be true if they were also behind payment by only the same time the Government has failed to remit exchequer releases to them. If you look at page 20, county governments are saying that the main cause of non- remittance of pension deductions was delayed disbursement of the County Government's Equitable Share of Revenue, where the National Treasury has consistently on average been three months in arrears when it comes to disbursement of Equitable Share, causing the delays in disbursement of pension deductions. Our expectation is, if that is the correct position, all county governments should only be at the maximum in arrears of three months' contributions. What we know from the ground is that because these deductions are easy, and they are effected on people's payslips. What the county governments are doing is using and diverting these resources for payment of other pending bills within the county governments. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I am a strong proponent of the Senate either doing what has been recommended here; making sure that KRA is utilised to retain these monies at source or the Senate to ring-fence monies for the payment of statutory deductions at source, in this House and on this Floor so that county governments do not continue giving pensioners stories that do not make sense. Therefore, if you look at the breakdown of the date on page 13 of that Report, you will see that the amount of debt accumulated before devolution pales in comparison with"
}