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    "id": 1474370,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1474370/?format=api",
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    "content": "centres and authorities that have been vested with that responsibility into one for better coordination for efficiency and synergies. It is for that reason that I support this Bill. Madam Temporary Speaker, the Bill also makes provisions for county disaster risk management committees to be chaired by the county governors. Part of those who will be sitting in those committees is the County Commissioner. We need to be very careful on this. Sometimes, through national legislation, we have come up with structures and proposals for county governments that ended up not working. You do recall the conversation at the devolution donor working group earlier today where one participant said that sometimes we legislate at the national level and tell counties to establish committees which never work. The county policing authority which was established by national legislation has never been actualized to date. Madam Temporary Speaker, this is the painful bit that through legislation, the Basic Education Act, we established the county education boards. Most county education boards across the country are understaffed, underfunded and not effective in any form or shape. I recall in Homa Bay County, the inaugural chair of the county education board was a very distinguished educationist, a lady called Mrs. Roselyn Onyuka. She had become a provincial education officer, who had been a principal of many schools. I am sure that even here in Parliament, a number of the ladies here are her protégées. She was made the chair of the county education board but given no funding and budgetary support. She had to resign out of frustration. The reason why I bring these parallels is that we are creating a county disaster risk management committee through this Bill. If we are not careful, it will go the direction of the county education boards, the county environment committees and the county policing oversight authorities. I have seen a few county governments that have come up with county disaster risk management laws. We need to ensure that when we make national legislation, we do not make it too prescriptive for county governments. Let us make it descriptive so that county governments can then come up with their own legislation to ensure that they do what is useful and what is possible in their areas. The disaster management committees must be agile. They cannot be bureaucracies because a disaster strikes sometimes when least expected. In the definition of disasters, they are those that can be foreseen, but they are those that come when least expected. Therefore, you do not need a strong bureaucracy. You do not need committees where the proceedings are guided by normal rules of procedure to manage disaster issues in counties. In Nairobi City County, when the Governor appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts, there had just been a fire incident in Gikomba Market. In Nairobi, it has become a ritual also that there will be fire in Toi Market and Gikomba Market yet the amount of money that we collect from Toi Market and Gikomba Market is sufficient to acquire firefighting equipment and to support a disaster management unit in this city. However, the traders in those markets never see that service come back to them, even after they have faithfully paid their dues on a daily basis. The Nairobi County Disaster Risk Management Act provided that the disaster committee would be chaired by the deputy governor and it made very elaborate and clear provisions on how it ought to be run. It even included incorporation of the local elected leadership in Nairobi. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only.A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and Audio Services,Senate."
}