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{
    "id": 1626304,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1626304/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 276,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. We are progressing well as a Senate. I appreciate that even as I rise to speak, I support this Bill before us, the County Governments Additional Allocation Bill. This Bill comes in the backdrop of the Division of Revenue Bill, which we recently passed to allocate funds between the national Government and county governments. I had the pleasure of being part of the team that mediated on the Division of Revenue Bill, where we passed through the vertical share of revenue between the national Government and the county governments. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, you know very well this is the substantive and mainstream budgetary Bill that we pass in this House basically to look at the monies that are going to the counties. From that Bill alone, we managed, as a House, to increase the allocation to the counties. Initially, it had been proposed that county governments be given Kshs387 billion last year which is what they got. The national Government had proposed to give them Kshs405 billion, but we managed as a House to push the figure to Kshs415 billion as a mainstay legislation that gives counties money. It should be noted by the public that this is a follow-up to that. Article 202(2) of the Constitution anticipated a situation where that mainstay documentation of sharing revenue; we could share revenue between the national Government and county governments and then perhaps there could be more money required to do more functions. These functions could be affected in two ways. First, under Schedule Four where functions have been assigned to counties, but there is less money following them. This is a battle we have been fighting in this House, especially because most of these functions are naturally not costed. We need to cost these functions to make sure that we have got the right metrics and calculus to ensure both national Government and county government functions are run with the right amount of money that they need. Under Article 187 of the Constitution, there is also a possibility that county governments might get additional responsibilities delegated by the national Government to be able to undertake those functions that the national Government is supposed to do. For instance, at the beginning of our term, the President made a pronouncement around the issue of building industrial parks in all 47 counties to stimulate economic growth; that each county should have an industrial park. An industrial park is not something that is explicitly a function of county governments. It is something that the national Government, through its agenda, was thinking of introducing and, therefore, came up with this idea that counties can contribute and the national Government can also contribute. That is a pseudo-allocation of functions to county governments. What ended up happening is that Article 187 is, therefore, evoked by that presidential pronouncement that then brings counties to do something like that. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}