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{
    "id": 1565842,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1565842/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 257,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Housing Levy Fund, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and the County Aggregated Industrial Parks (CAIPs). These are policy decisions that have been taken at the national level, which policy decisions have a direct bearing on the revenues of county governments. When you say that you are going to allocate Kshs250 million for the CAIP in every county and every county government is supposed to match that allocation, it is not like there is any county government that has the option of opting out. All of them must spend Kshs250 million to match the government expenditure for the parks. For this reason, there is need to consider that amount in the allocation to counties. If you do not, what it means is that they will have to stop other budgetary allocations for their functions to support the industrial parks and that is basic intelligence. On the issue of the UHC and every speaker has spoken to this matter, hardly a day passes before medics working under the UHC demonstrate outside of Parliament and specifically outside the gates of the Senate. I heard the Cabinet Secretary responsible for Health the other day saying that they are now going to be offloading the UHC staff to county governments. If that is going to happen, then the expectation, would be that all these UHC staff, if they have got to migrate to the county government's payrolls, then they must migrate with their budget for their salaries and allowances. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, you cannot expect that you will migrate such a huge portion of workers and staff to a level of government and then that level of government is supposed to use their own money again to pay and compensate the important services offered by UHC staff. So, there is reason to stick to the guidance by our committee to ensure that counties get Kshs465 billion for the next financial year. I want to address myself to the issue of roads. There has been debate as to whether some of the roads that are being done by the national government agencies, including the Kenya National Highways Authority (KENHA) and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA), actually do not belong to county governments. Truth be told, I am happy that I have heard that the Prime Minister will be with us tomorrow. We will have a conversation about these issues because I know this is a matter that is very dear to him. On the issue of monies allocated to roads in this country, there is no denying that the agencies of government, especially KENHA and KeRRA are undertaking road projects that actually belong to county governments. Maybe the time has come to consider scrapping those agencies and transferring those funds to county governments so that they may be able to roll out road projects in their respective counties. There have been arguments all through that when you send money to the counties, the money is being stolen, you know, governors are misappropriating funds. That can never be a reason why we should not add monies to counties. That is a lazy argument. If it is true - and I know it could be true - that money is being misappropriated at the county level, there is a law that deals with people misappropriating funds at whatever level of government."
}