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{
    "id": 1527149,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1527149/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 299,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Bondo, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gideon Ochanda",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I want to speak to something that the entire leadership of the House needs to be cautious about. We have conflicts every year in terms of the vertical division of revenue. We do it without thinking of additional monies, whether conditional or unconditional, that are extended to the counties. This Bill includes additional funding figures of above Ksh6 billion. If we add on grants and many other things that the national Government supports the counties on, we are talking about huge amounts of money. The markets that the national Government is constructing in my county are worth more than Ksh1 billion, and they are not included in the Bill. That is in one county. If we put all those things together, the disputes that we constantly have between the Senate and ourselves about the figures and the division of revenue should end. We should lump together all those allocations to the counties in one division of revenue arrangement when we are doing the vertical division of revenue. We should implement that arrangement moving forward, so that it also helps us in terms of negotiations and understanding. We should not constantly dispute over revenue division just because of figures that are thrown on the table. Hon. Temporary Speaker, the other issue is the monies that are taken to the counties in relation to their development vote. What we saw last week was a little bit embarrassing. No county had more than 25 per cent absorption rate of their development vote. If you isolate the 25 per cent absorption rate and examine how the counties are spending the money, the county that had used the development vote in a manner worth discussing was at a rate of slightly over 30 per cent. The rest had absorption rates of below 10 per cent. Why do we constantly allocate additional monies to the counties yet there is no development? We need to check on that. There is no comparison between the allocations we give to the counties and the meagre resources that are allocated to the NG-CDF). They cannot be compared at all. It is not right that counties are not carrying out any development, with their absorption rate of development funds being below 10 per cent. It is astonishing."
}