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{
    "id": 1489955,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1489955/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 100,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Okiya Omtatah",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Speaker Sir, thank you for the occasion to contribute to this Report which I fully support. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the question of revenue taken down to counties is at the heart of the Kenyan State. The Kenyan State is defined as divided in the counties as given in the First Schedule. That territory is supposed to be governed by both the national and the county governments. In the allocation of their shares, at least, 15 percent of the total revenue is supposed to be devolved. However, in the usual machinations of the National Assembly, when they enacted the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) Act, they defined revenue available to counties as excluding certain revenues. Therefore, already they went against the constitutional provision to reduce the amount of money that is supposed to be devolved as an automatic percentage. Two, they deliberately lag behind in terms of the approved audited accounts, such that when we come to divide this money that comes in the division of revenue, we lag behind. We are behind by so much time and you will find that the budget of the current year has grown by leaps and bounds. Nonetheless, we are using a budget that is about four or five years late. All those things have turned out to frustrate the amount of money that goes to counties. Over and above that, they come up with these machinations where they think that the counties are at their mercy and so they should reduce the money at their whims. There is no study that the National Assembly has presented to this House to show that the reductions are scientific. It is not an art. These are facts and figures. What is informing their figures when they say they are going to go down? Ours at least were informed by the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) and stuff like that. We have good studies that have been done on the ground why we need this money to go down to counties as additional funds, to deal with this and that. We do not have any scientific data that the National Assembly has used to arrive at a position that the allocations should be reduced and that is why it should be rejected with a resounding no from this House. Since, it is a document authored on the whims of men; men who think that they can roll or wrap this country around a small finger and all will be well with them. If you look at the amounts of money being allocated to these counties, they are just millions of shillings. Most of the counties are just being given millions of shillings. In fact, some are just in tens of millions, very few are in hundreds. Therefore, you wonder why would anybody want to interfere with the very little money that is going to these counties. I pray that the rejection of the proposals by the National Assembly be upheld by this House. Let us go by the earlier position whereby the counties at least get the money that the Senate has struggled to allocate them. When the Finance Bill, 2024 was rejected by the Gen Z and other Kenyans, the President conceded by returning it back to Parliament. That should have been an exercise that went alongside the Budget or the Appropriation Act. That Appropriation Act survived in the absence of the Finance Bill that was supposed to finance it and that is where the problem begins. We should have gone back to the drawing board and done a good thing. 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."
}