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"id": 1456927,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cherarkey",
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"legal_name": "Cherarkey K Samson",
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"content": "brothers and sisters. So, we support the issues of MCAs, their salary review and personal remunerations. We want to assure that we shall push and ensure that the SRC--- You remember the President held a meeting with all the MCAs. I see Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale who is a Member of the Standing Committee on Finance and Budget. I do not know what they will do with the SRC to table the recommendations that they have done on the issue of salaries, review and remuneration. We are not pushing for increment, but they should be given capacity, even ward offices. For us we are given liaison offices at counties. We need them for oversight. I was sad when I saw one part of the Nyamira County Assembly Chamber collapse. Sen. Okong’o Omogeni should be nice to me. I have directed, through the Committee, for Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to swing into action to ensure accountability. Counties are facing budget performance, which is largely attributed to delayed disbursement by the National Treasury. So, we request the new Cabinet Secretary for National Treasury to release money. On the issue of imprest, we need to ensure there is proper surrender, after time, without interest, as per the Public Financial Management (PFM) Act. The issue of ethnic composition, you find that most of the county assemblies are ethnic conclaves that must be looked at. Therefore, we demand that the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) and the county assemblies, respectively, should look at the composition of ethnic staff establishment and the one-third basic salary rule. MCAs should be told not to take all their salary; they must obey a third principle in basic salary. The issue of county assembly and Speakers’ residences, the limit has been indicated and let us obey it. On the issue of pending bills, the Chairperson has directed that county assemblies should abide by the resolutions on pending bills. So, we have transmitted as a Senate that pending bills must be sort out as soon as possible. I want to advise the SOCATT, CAF and Council of Governors (CoGs) to come up with a proposal to anchor them into law. Spending resources allocated to them on something that has not been provided for through legal authority is illegal, unconstitutional and immoral. Going into the future as a Committee, we shall be referring this expenditure to the EACC, so that various officers can be surcharged and charged in the court of law. On the late submission of documentation, we have noticed county assemblies have this documentation, but they continue to violate Section 65 of the Public Audit Act that recommends any entity, on the period of audit, should give the OAG documents in time. As we review the budget, I ask the people who allocate budgets, especially us and the National Assembly, to give more resources to the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, allow me a minute to say this; we need to resource OAG to visit projects. What we are getting as a committee are narratives about Garissa, Nandi and Kakamega counties. We need to empower the OAG to go to Nyamira County with the public works officers to look at the County Assembly of Nyamira. 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 and AudioServices, Senate."
}