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{
    "id": 1527196,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1527196/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 346,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Karachuonyo, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Adipo Okuome",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to this Bill. First, I support the Bill. My support is with some questions and concerns that I would like governors to address. I know they are doing a good job for us. Devolution is excellent and the whole country supported it. However, I must say to our Governors that we are yet to see the expected impact. For example, in hospitals, you often hear about strikes, health workers laid off, some are not paid and so forth. This is the case and yet there is no time they have not got their shareable revenue. They get that all the time. Something is amiss with their management. Kenya is an agricultural country and has been so for ages. I hoped that with devolution we would see this in reality, but we have not. Counties are not doing the expectations we have on agriculture. If governors were doing their job as expected, no one among us or even out there, the people of Kenya, would criticise them. They are causing the criticism we hear now and again. They have major sources of revenue, the shareable ones and their self-revenue. I know they have some grants – let me not go to those. What we hear all the time is that we have huge and growing pending bills. I would have liked an analyst to tell us the amount of revenue collected in counties compared to what the old county councils were collecting. Which one is higher? If what they are collecting is less, and I am told it is, then we remain with a very strong question that county governors must answer. As of now, they are governments. Those, were just councils. They cannot compare themselves to a council. That also leaves a big question, and something must be wrong. Perhaps, money is collected but it does not reach the county treasuries. Or it may be that it reaches the county treasuries, but does not perform the duties it is collected for. Counties have two types of expenditures – development and recurrent. If you look at the records, recurrent expenditure is extremely high. Though it is supposed to be not more than 70 per cent, it is quite high compared to development expenditure. Development expenditure should be in the region of 30 per cent but from what we have been seeing, a number of counties reach nothing near it. It is development expenditure that leaves the trail of what the country gains. A country spending more on development expenditure gains in development. If you are heavy on recurrent expenditure, you are like somebody who gets a salary and eats it all. In the end, he has nothing to remind him that he had some money or earned some income because there is nothing it did. Recurrent expenditure does not leave a trail. There are a lot of inadequacies at the county level. They need to pull up. As I speak, I am not sure counties can tell us what they have achieved in a manner we, the Members of Parliament, can say we have done with the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF). The money we have got for NG-CDF is used in such a manner that all the time, even without you as a Member of Parliament being there, whatever you do is conspicuous. People see it and can explain the benefits they get from NG-CDF. I am not sure whether people can also take it upon themselves to explain what devolution is doing. 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."
}