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{
    "id": 1550623,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1550623/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 554,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kitui Central, WDM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) Makali Mulu",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. I will start by appreciating my Chairperson, Hon. Atandi, and the Vice-Chairman for moving and seconding this important Bill. I will restrict myself to the issues in the Bill to save time for others. The Division of Revenue Bill is supposed to share revenue between the two levels of Government: the national Government and county governments. That is why I have reservations about why the Equalisation Fund appears in this Bill. It is purely about sharing revenue between the two levels of Government. However, we can live with the Equalisation Fund. It is additional information. There is no problem. The issue is sharing revenue. It means that the key factor in determining the whole Bill is revenue. I have concerns when I see that we are still discussing only certain approved accounts for the Financial Year 2020/2021 in this Bill. This means we are in arrears by three years. The revenue we are discussing is Ksh1.57 trillion. However, the last audited report currently puts national revenue at around Ksh2.8 trillion. We are already excluding about Ksh1.3 trillion from this important discussion. As a House, are we doing this deliberately? If we, as a House, are accused of a deliberate move to ensure we do not give counties money, shall we get out of this accusation? Even as we talk about the county governments, this House has a task to ensure that either we push the audited reports to only one-year arrears or remove the word \"approved\" and retain the word \"audited.\" If we go by the Auditor-General's report, I can tell you for sure that the accounts for the Financial Year 2023/2024 are already audited. If we exclude the word \"approved,\" we will discuss last year's revenue, which might improve the figures. The figures given by the National Treasury show that out of the revenue collected, we add Ksh17.6 billion. The Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) said we add Ksh30 billion. That is a difference of about Ksh12.4 billion, which we have not given to the counties. However, we know the economic situation. If we address some of the challenges we face as a country, we will help the county and national governments. The first one is costing of functions. Some of these functions were costed in 2013. A unit of electricity in 2013 compared to today has increased by more than four times, but we are still using the figures from 2013. As a House, can we discuss and ensure that all the devolved functions are costed? If I want to know how much it costs to provide healthcare to Mr Otieno in Homa Bay County, I can say it costs Ksh10,000. Then, I can multiply the population of Homa Bay by the unit cost and say that I require a certain number of millions to provide healthcare effectively. This will help us to identify the gaps. If we identify them, we can deliberately say that this year, we will not fund the health function 100 per cent, but we will fund 80 per cent, the following year 90 per cent and then 100 per cent in the third year. In that case, we will be helping our people in the provision of services. The other important component we must address is duplication of functions. The counties have said that the national Government is still clinging to many functions that should have been pushed to them. Most of the regional authorities perform devolved functions. How much money will we save if we agree that those functions be devolved and we do away with the administrative costs and recurrent expenditure of those authorities? In this 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."
}