Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1490810,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1490810/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 125,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Osotsi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13588,
        "legal_name": "Osotsi Godfrey Otieno",
        "slug": "osotsi-godfrey-otieno"
    },
    "content": "about 80 water companies in 47 counties. It is 80 because some counties have more than one water company depending on the vastness of that county. We have managed to process 80 water companies. This is just one of the Motions that we are going to do. We have about five Motions for different water companies. This is the first one that we are engaging. We have others that we will look at, but the story is the same. The key challenges is the ownership of these water companies. Nearly all these water companies were not directly owned by the county government. The Water Act specifically provides that the county government will have a 100 per cent shareholding in these companies. When we moved into these companies, we realised that there were a number of gaps that needed to be addressed regarding ownership. Through our innovative approach to the matter, we issued interim recommendations to various counties. One key recommendation was that counties speed up and own these water companies. I am happy to report that nearly all 47 counties now fully own their water companies. The other issue was the mismanagement of these water companies. Most of these water companies are mismanaged. In fact, quite a number are insolvent. They cannot even pay salaries or pay for electricity. In fact, in most of the counties, county governments are the ones paying for electricity bills for these water companies. So, basically, they are companies on deathbeds being financed to do critical operations like paying salaries and water bills by the county government. This has to change because these water companies were designed to be investment units for the county government in terms of water management. Therefore, they need to be self- sustaining and self-financing. The other important challenge we found is that there are a significant number of audit queries regarding these water companies. Most of these audit queries have not been resolved for all these years. One reason is that the Senate has not been looking at the audit report, and therefore, there are outstanding issues that have not been resolved to date. So, all these audit queries, which are specified in the respective reports, have also been addressed by the Committee. For the queries with high fiduciary risk, we have had to forward them to various institutions, including the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and other investigative arms of the Government. In our meetings, we received a number of written and oral evidence from the governors in response to the various audit queries raised by the Auditor-General and the reports that were under consideration for the dates I specified. The Committee has adopted these reports for the financial years 2018/2019, 2019/2020, and 2020/2021. In all these three financial years, the Auditor-General reported that the majority of the county water companies had high non-revenue water, which was above the sector benchmark of 25 per cent. Non-revenue water is basically water that is not accounted for; water that is either stolen or water that the water company cannot put a claim to. In most of these water companies, the non-revenue water is very high, above 30 per cent, which basically signifies that we will have a challenge in the future in managing the non- revenue water. 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."
}