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{
"id": 1459574,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1459574/?format=api",
"text_counter": 196,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Kiharu, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Ndindi Nyoro",
"speaker": null,
"content": "by events. As a country, this is a route we have to travel. We cannot continue having many governmental bodies with overlapping services to the Kenyan people, while we are still spending a lot of money in terms of recurrent expenditure. Forty-Seven Government organisations have been hauled up through this process. We are first denying them the budget as we decide what to do with them. Secondly, I want to request that we follow this discussion together as Members. For instance, in Suna West, North Horr, and Baringo North constituencies, we have an engineer who represents the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) on the ground. In the same constituency or region, we have a Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) office with engineers on the ground. In the same jurisdiction, we have Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) officers on the ground. We have to ask ourselves very honest questions: do we need engineers from KeRRA, KeNHA and KURA at the same time, say, in Runyenjes Constituency? Can these roles be done by a single authority in the region? That will move us towards rationalising the recurrent expenditure so that we can free up resources to go into development. In the water sector alone, we have over 20 bodies. There are over 10 water services and many other national bodies. We have to look inwards and be very categorical. As a country, do we need 20 water bodies, whereas each of them is having like Ksh500 million in their recurrent budget, doing the same job? This is a question that in the mid-term we have to ask and critically evaluate. Do we need these bodies or do we condense them to free up resources to go to other service areas in the country? Hon. Speaker, I also want to highlight some of the areas we never touched in terms of rationalising their budgets. I want to laud the collective wisdom of this House, and I request that the Members get this very clearly. Whereas we have been cutting the Budget to fit into the shoe properly, there are some areas that the House said we do no cut. It is because we think they are critical to the people of Kenya. There is the Ksh18.7 billion that had been allocated for the confirmation of the JSS interns. We did not approve any cuts on it. The money is going to be appropriated in order that all the 46,000 JSS interns are confirmed into permanent and pensionable terms. Second is the issue of interns in the health sector. We have also allocated Ksh3.7 billion for interns in the health sector to be confirmed into permanent and pensionable terms because they deserve that. Third, our economy is agrarian/agricultural-based. This is not a very good story because in economics, one of the areas to measure whether an economy is growing is when it has less and less of agriculture in the composition of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There is economic growth and economic development. In economic growth, there are jargons like “GDP”, “Gross National Product” (GNP) and the rest. However, in economic development, we define the economy both quantitatively and qualitatively. One of the qualitative measures of whether an economy is a developed one is an economy that has less than 10 per cent of agriculture in the composition of GDP. Fortunately, or unfortunately, in Kenya, agriculture still accounts for over 18 per cent of our GDP. With agriculture, I mean the primary part of production which is agriculture, forestry, mining, and fisheries. That is where we are now. We need to do something on it because 70 per cent of our rural population is engaged in agriculture. In that respect, we have allocated Ksh7.5 billion for fertiliser subsidies. The fertiliser subsidies will be for food crops as well as cash crops. Coffee, maize, and even cotton farmers can access that fertiliser. There is no discrimination in regard to the kind of crop that our farmers are growing. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}