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{
    "id": 1478498,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1478498/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 148,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. John Mbadi",
    "speaker_title": "The Cabinet Secretary for National Treasury and Economic Planning",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the ID card, interestingly, I agree with you. I am one of the people who are in this school of thought that you do not have to pay to register as a Kenyan if we can take up this cost. Not long ago, I spoke to this differently. I do not want to speak a different language because today I am a Cabinet Secretary. I do not think it is wise to charge for new applicants. Maybe you can charge for replacement because, again, you need to be careful when you are given a national identity. You need to protect it so that you do not lose it. However, when you are applying for the first time, I agree that this is a fee that needs to be reconsidered. I now sit in the Government. I will use that platform to speak in the line that you are speaking. Once the Government takes that position, then I will join the Government in speaking the position of the Government, because I am in the Cabinet. I hope you understand the difference there. Who owns eCitizen? The eCitizen is now run by the Government. I explained that you pay for convenience. That is why it is called convenience fee. You may have a problem with it, but that is the rationale for which it was introduced. It can be debatable whether it is a wise idea, but you pay for convenience. Consequently, in the absence of eCitizen, it was quite inconveniencing to get Government services. Sen.Veronica asked a question with regards to plans to onboard the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) onto eCitizen. As we speak, there is a high-level engagement in the Government to see how to integrate all these systems. I think very soon, we will onboard all these SHIF into eCitizen, because it is now the standard Government payment platform. We have also seen the reduction in leakages of public funds the moment we resorted to this single account, the 222222. Therefore, we must onboard SHIF to the eCitizen. The last question that I was asked by about four Senators, I will combine it because it has one answer. The Senator for Embu was the first one to ask the question in Kiswahili. You will forgive me, I will answer it in English. Additionally, the Senator for Wajir County, Sen. Abass and, of course, Sen. Faki of Mombasa, asked about the transfer of funds to the counties. I need no persuasion that transfer of funds to the counties must be done timeously. We had agreed that it should be on 5th of the following month and that we need to follow it religiously. I know we have had quite a bit of challenges in terms of cash flow, but the problem that we had at the beginning of this financial year was not entirely on cash flow. Actually, it does not help the National Treasury to keep piling transfers to counties because we end up with huge bills to pay at a specific time. 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."
}