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{
"id": 1407756,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1407756/?format=api",
"text_counter": 335,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Methu",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13581,
"legal_name": "Methu John Muhia",
"slug": "methu-john-muhia"
},
"content": "bills for recurrent. You only find pending bills for development. Therefore, county governments must take it very seriously, especially when it comes to their own source revenue. Finally, when I last stood here, I said that governments have perpetuity. Some counties have had two or more governors. For example, Nyeri and Kiambu counties have had more than three while Nyandarua has had three governors. The moment the first governor left office, the second governor when he took over, established a pending bills verification committee. Now, if you have looked at all your pending bills, all of them and processed, you have a list of eligible pending bills and another list here of ineligible pending bills. If you have accepted that this is an eligible pending bill, why do you not pay it? I was asking here and I have been asking the same question in CPAC where I serve as a Member, for a murram road that was done in the year 2013, and that one sits in your books as pending bills, how do you send the auditors to confirm whether that road exists or not? Now, with this kind of flooding we are experiencing in the country, both murram and main tarmac roads are being washed away. What would become of a 12- year-old murram road? We all know a pending bill is money that somebody has rendered a service to the Government using his own money, but the Government has not paid him. People take loans and die. It is becoming catastrophic to do business with counties. It is the least fashionable unless the governor is your brother, cousin, boyfriend, girlfriend or husband for that matter, because you will be paid. It is difficult to do business with counties because there are two things. First, to even get that job, you have to know the governor very well. More importantly, to get paid for that job or service that you have rendered to that county government becomes very difficult. As I wind up, it is not just about saying that pending bills are a first charge. The Controller of Budget (CoB) must help by insisting to governors that before they approve payment of new bills, there must be a roadmap of what they have done with the pending bills. Since 2014, the days of Dr. Edward Ouko, the Auditor-General at that time, he did an audit on the pending bills for all the counties. He gave them a report on the pending bills that they were supposed to honour. Some of those who were there in 2014, 10 years later, to this minute, have not been paid. The CoB ought to help us in ensuring that the approval of all the requisitions that have been made by county governments in terms of settlement of pending bills. It should be chronological in a matter of the age of that bill. What is the sense of you getting paid for a job or a service that you rendered last year and a person who rendered the same service six years ago is not getting paid? Why are you jumping the queue? Is it because campaigned for, or have any relationship with the governor? That should not be the case. It should not be a death sentence or suicide to offer services to county governments. As we deliberate on these pending bills, for example, Nyandarua County, has a very huge pending bill on Ol Kalou Stadium which its construction started in 2013 the year I joined the university. I was in the university for four years, graduated and got married. I am now a father and Senator yet, a person who rendered the services when I"
}