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"id": 1527728,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Okenyuri",
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"content": "I would like to mention this particular issue that the Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of the National Treasury and Economic Planning who failed to bring his views to this Committee because he had already submitted the same in the National Assembly. As the Senate we are really missing the point. When the Constitution pronounces itself on what Parliament is, that, Parliament is both the National Assembly and the Senate, and we have a role to play because these are matters which are touching on counties. I feel the conduct of the Cabinet Secretary to this Committee needs to be noted, and the Senate needs to bite, or rather we get an explanation as to why the particular Cabinet Secretary decided to take the route he took, even after we as the Members of the Committee burnt the midnight oil trying to come up with this report to present to the House. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, overall projections show that inflation is within the targeted ranges that had been given, and this decline shows that we need to add more resources because initially we said inflation levels are very high, so we were cutting down on money that is going down to, for instance, counties. Now that inflation is coming down, we expect that counties this time round are going to actually get more money. My plea to county chiefs, especially when it comes to use of this money, let us use money wisely so that we are not having county chiefs who are wasting public resources when we in Nairobi are working very hard to ensure that they are getting this money so that we have services closer to the people, are actually taking it for granted. On the issue of own-source revenue, this is something we also need to touch on because most of the pending bills that we are talking about in this Budget Policy Statement are as a result of counties overestimating their own sources of revenue. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I am working behind the curtains to have a proposal that will force counties to state what they can raise basing on their last own-source revenue they had raised. This is so that we do not have counties projecting more than they are able to actualize and then we end up with large amounts of pending bills. We thank our Chair for being with Members of the Committee throughout this process and now we have this report for Members to contribute on. Unfortunately, we have few Members this evening and yet, these are matters that touch on their counties. Citizens from all counties are waiting to see what we have to say concerning ordinary people."
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