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{
    "id": 1491379,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1491379/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 150,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I thank you for giving me this opportunity. From the onset, I rise to support this amazing Bill by the wonderful Senator for Meru. I am in the Finance and Budget Committee and have had the opportunity to interrogate this Bill many times. We had a lot of stakeholder engagements together with the Senator for Meru County on this particular Bill. We cannot overemphasize the issue of financial autonomy in terms of how the county assembly should be able to run their affairs. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the task of oversight and accountability bestowed upon county assemblies is, indeed, one task that has been wallowing and has been very difficult to meet because of this issue of financial autonomy. It is very hard to oversight anybody who feeds you or anybody who holds the key to your resources. Therefore, today I just want to talk about one or two pitfalls that I see with this Bill that we must be able to caution the assembly. When the Senate Majority Leader was moving this Bill yesterday, he emphasized a lot of the benefits of this Bill. The Seconder of the Motion yesterday was Sen. Sifuna, who also spent a lot of time churning through the Bill that I find to be very self-explanatory. When we were going through the process of public participation and stakeholder engagement as a committee, one of the areas that the Senate, must be able to help by cushioning the county assemblies--- We have experienced times without number where we see that exchequer releases to counties are extremely delayed. When the exchequer delays release going to counties, we have seen several times when the county governments led by governors can sometimes go to different banks and borrow on short-term notice, as well as sometimes getting unsecured loans so that those unsecured loans, they can pay for them when exchequer releases comes to them. Given that we are seeking these financial autonomies for county assemblies. If you look at the Bill, some finances will deal with administration as well as sometimes affect payrolls of those who are employed within the county assembly. It can be sometimes very hard for the county assembly to figure out how do they then go and raise resources. In a case where there is a serious delay with the exchequer, that is the one big thing that we, as the Senate, should ponder to see if we can create some remedy. For example, in the instances where there is no money going to the county due to exchequer delays, then we can intervene and help counties be able to raise money in some ways as the way for the external reason. 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."
}