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{
"id": 1566384,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566384/?format=api",
"text_counter": 137,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "am not wrong, were spending more than half the resources that we devolved on paying salaries. Surely, why should you want to be called a governor? Your name should be turned to paymaster general. You are just a salaries payment officer if you are disposing more than half of the shareable revenue that is due to your county to pay salaries alone. I have said that this business of telling us that in 2013, you inherited members of staff from the defunct municipal councils and you have to find ways of paying them; it is almost 15 years since that exercise happened. What is your contingency plan? I would like to tell the Members here that if we wait for our county governors to file the plan on the route to achieving the statutory 35 per cent spent on recurrent expenditure, it will never happen. We are the ones who passed Regulation 25 of the PFM Act on how much each county is supposed to spend. We are the ones who are charged with the mandate of enforcing it. I, therefore, urge the hon. Members, especially the Members of the Committee on Finance and Budget who brought us this wonderful report to lead us in an exercise where we have a conversation, sit down and pass regulations. This is so that, if a county government does not file a plan through which they head and yet, prudent use of public resources is not an event. It is a process. There is a way through which you grow your numbers. If today you are at 47 per cent because if I recall, Sen. Faki, that is the number that Mombasa County was at. Governor Abdulswamad must file before this House the plan that they have for the next three, four, five or even six years as a county government to move towards the attainment of the statutory 35 per cent. However, if this year is at 47 per cent, the next year at 48 per cent then the year after, it becomes 50 per cent, even us, as a House, we are complicit in the maladministration that is going on in our counties. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we have been reminded this afternoon that there are many initiatives that keep on popping up, collaborations between county governments and the national Government. First of all, there were County Aggregation and Industrial Parks (CAIPs). We should go and check the plans being done by the county governments. You know, CAIP was conceptualized in Nairobi, and that is why we must move away from these plans that are conceptualized in the well air-conditioned rooms here in Nairobi, but have no meaning or connection whatsoever with the challenges that people face in the village. If the ‘youth leader’, Sen. (Dr.) Oburu, goes to his county today, he should ask himself the plan being made to make sure that the CAIP being built in his county will be of service to the people of Siaya. Chances are, there is absolutely nothing. If he asks the governor, he will rightfully say that he was not consulted. He was just told to give a matching fund of Kshs250 million. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we too cannot plead innocence because we participated in passing a Division of Revenue that ensured that each county contributed Kshs250 million. With the exception of Nairobi, the same, can be said about the community health promoters. Surely, if the only thing they earn is a salary, why does someone need to keep"
}