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{
    "id": 1583257,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1583257/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 215,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kitui Central, WDM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) Makali Mulu",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "allocation was done keenly. As a result of that, some regions were marginalised and we came up with the Equalisation Fund. It is by design that some parts of this country have remained poor for some time. That is the reason the poverty levels are very high. The reason why we have been pushing for poverty index to be this high in terms of percentage is to help these areas to scale up. The percentage that is allocated to poverty levels has kept on reducing every year. We are now going back to push for population to be the leading factor of consideration. Through Sessional Paper No.10 of 1965, these areas were developed and people migrated from the marginalised areas to high potential areas. The population of these areas became very high. Through the fourth-generation formula, it is like we are going back to the Sessional Paper No.10 of 1965 in terms of planning. When you give a certain population 45 per cent of the available resources, it is unfair to the rest of the country. There are areas with huge geographical size where providing goods and services is a tall order. However, we are now downgrading geographical area and upgrading population. With time, counties with a big geographical area will never develop at the same pace with counties that have high population. For example, South-Eastern, North-Eastern and North Rift parts of this country will always be marginalised because we are, again, pushing resources to areas with high population. If I was to have my way, I would have the percentage pegged on population reduced and the percentage pegged on the geographical area increased. Our Constitution states that resources should be shared in a way that counties can implement their functions. As a country, we have not cost devolved functions fully. About 10 years ago is the last time we attempted to cost devolved function. Things have changed. For example, the price of a unit of electricity today is not the same with how it was in 2013. So, we need to ask ourselves how much money in totality do counties require to be effective in the implementation of their functions so that we can cost all functions of counties and propose an amount that they will require to implement them, for example, Ksh700 billion, and how to share it. In the immediate formula, the third generational formula, issues of health, agriculture and roads development were factored and they have now disappeared. In an area like Garissa, there are no roads. They have paths in the name of roads. At what point will we develop roads in Garissa, Mandera, Kitui and Makueni if we do not factor in the level of development in our sharing formulae? It looks like we are still pushing so hard for resources to be where people are and we will continue being left behind. On corruption, we all talk about it here. How will we address corruption when we exclude fiscal responsibility as a factor in sharing resources? We do not care how people use resources before we give them more resources. We should have a situation where fiscal responsibility becomes an important factor in sharing of resources so that those who take care of public resources are given more resources and those who misdirect resources are given less resources. We will have more people joining the league of those who use public resources well. For now, it does not matter whether one uses public resources well or not. They will still get public resources based on this formula. How I wish we had a way of bringing up such a formula to address the situation. Since we cannot raise the two-thirds majority to change this formula, we will live with it for the next five years. Those who are marginalised will continue being marginalised and those who are developed will continue developing. I submit."
}