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{
    "id": 1583253,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1583253/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 211,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. I rise to support the report and the proposed formula. It is an improvement on the previous one. I also appreciate the effort that has gone into developing it. However, it has limitations. It is based on only three things: population size, land area, and poverty index. Now, looking at the poverty index is looking at the reverse. It would have probably been better to look at the human development index because it tells you what people need. The poverty index tells you how much people are suffering without giving solutions. The human development index tells you the state of health, education, and the standards of living of a people. For example, in health, you would use such figures about life expectancy at birth. With further analysis, you will find out why life expectancy is shorter in this country, for instance, Nyanza compared to the central parts of the country. It will inform how long people have been in school and what they have achieved by the age of 25. Thereafter, we will look at their per capita income. I think those will give you a more robust indicator or index. You can also use practical formulas like distance to health centres. Determining how far people in a given county walk to the nearest health centre and the number of tarmac roads in kilometres per individual. Those are more direct ways of looking at it. It informs how many more tarmac roads we need. The distance to health facilities informs the number of health facilities in an area and how many more are needed. As much as they are using the poverty index, they should work with the human development index and its components next time. That will get the direct input needed to estimate allocation to counties. More important is how money is used. Every time we stand here to talk about corruption in counties. In my opinion, the greatest change since devolution is the number of expensive houses you see in the countryside. When you ask, you find that most of these people work in counties. To which I say, “Well, at least something has happened”. We talk about corruption but there is one thing we do not look at. What about systems? Systems help us reduce corruption. Although we cannot eliminate it, we can reduce corruption. We were talking about the financial systems we use in counties just last week. We have the bigger Public Finance Management Act. However, how well are people at the county level trained on procurement systems? Regarding human resource, I will give an example of the health sector to which I am familiar. Of all devolved functions, I think health is the sector with the largest and most complex human resource. That is why we have the issues. On training, we have only one school of government in the country. By now, and because of devolution, one would expect we have many schools of government in various parts to enable county officers get appropriate training. We compare county governments with the national Government that has existed for over 100 years. The number of people who have gathered experience is huge in national Government. County governments have existed The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for informationpurposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}