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{
    "id": 1520154,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1520154/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 145,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Lagdera, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Abdikadir Mohamed",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to the Equalisation Fund Administration Bill. As it is now, the Equalisation Fund is administered by a regulation which was done by people who had counties in mind over devolution. The roles they give to the counties are important and nothing can move without them. Since they had counties in mind, they brought these regulations and they wanted to hand over the funds to the counties. If you look at it, 14 years after our Constitution, nothing is on the ground. Nothing has been done by the Equalisation Fund after the disbursement of Ksh70 billion. If you go to my constituency, you will not see a single toilet done through the Equalisation Fund yet the money has been utilised. Where is this money going to? Where has it gone? I have a problem with the way marginalised areas are being defined by this Bill. It is like marginalised areas are a moving target such that today your area is marked as a marginalised area and tomorrow it is not because this has been done based on policies. The previous policies have moved the marginalised counties from 14 to the current 34. Some small pockets of areas which have been developed through the Sessional Paper No.10, are now being called marginalised and have now eaten into the fund, which was meant for areas which are marginalised. We must have parameters in place on how to define marginalised areas. The other thing is that this money was supposed to be utilised in such a way that it could have an impact on development. Our county is not able to utilise the one for the Financial Year 2022/2023 because of the push and pull between the counties and the Members of Parliament. Many people have interests in this and so, we are not able to do anything. When we try to put these projects into one single project that will have an impact, for example, I wanted the money for Lagdera Constituency to be utilised for electricity that is taking the national grid from Garissa to Modogashe, it is not possible. Modogashe currently does not have electricity. It is done by a diesel generator. They did not agree to the proposal. We have a secretariat here at the headquarters administering this Fund, which believes that this money should be divided The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}