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"id": 182976,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/182976/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Eseli",
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"speaker": {
"id": 141,
"legal_name": "David Eseli Simiyu",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move the following Motion:- THAT, aware that devolution has been implemented successfully through funds such as CDF, roads funds and youth funds; noting that there are no criteria used to determine allocation, which means that constituencies receive equal amounts of money regardless of their peculiarities such as size, population, poverty levels and HIV prevalence; cognisant that continued uniform distribution of funds perpetrates unequal development, this House urges the Government to ensure the distribution of devolved funds presently and in future takes into consideration all factors that may influence the impact of such funds in order to remedy this situation and ensure equity in the distribution of national resources. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am really gratified that the House has just passed the Motion brought to the Floor of the House by Mr. Kaino, because the Motion that I am moving now actually dovetails into the Motion that has just been passed by the House, in the sense that, we should do the delineation of the administrative boundaries then we look at the devolved funding of the entities that we are going to create. It is very gratifying that the House has accepted to allow Mr. Kaino to bring the Bill on delineation of those boundaries. These Motions dovetail into each other, because we have realised that there is a problem in this country. We have all been anticipating a new Constitution, but the actions at the top seem to imply that nobody is interested in a new Constitution. If eventually we do not have a new Constitution in place, we, as Parliament, will have to put things in place that will safeguard mwananchi's welfare, so that he does not continue suffering. This is one of the Motions that we intend to pass in this House, so that we safeguard mwananchi in case people continue playing games with the drafting of a new Constitution. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the mirage of a new Constitution is real. When you look at the goings on, they are now building a new Prime Minister's and a new President's Office, yet we have not drafted a new Constitution and decided whether we are going Presidential or Parliamentary system. What has made these people decide to build those offices? That tells us that October 22, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2915 there is something they know, which they are not telling us. We probably will not have a new Constitution. What proves that we will not have a new Constitution again is that when we changed the Constitution at the beginning of the year, we said we would have a Prime Minister and two deputies. We entrenched that into the Constitution; then we fixed them in an accord, which will lapse at a certain time. We shall go into elections and whoever wins the Presidency and has got the majority will again have the Prime Minister and the two deputies. That is what the situation is like. That is why they are not keen on changing the Constitution at the moment. The Motion that I am moving today, is very important to safeguard the interests of Kenyans. While I commend the Government for its efforts to fight poverty, those efforts will come to naught unless there is a specific way in which things are done. There should be parameters used to guide the distribution of national resources. Right now, we are not using any set parameters. In fact, some decisions are more of political whims, or are coloured by tribal or nepotistic thinking, or, sometimes, the reasons behind them are unknown. For example, on the Budget Day, the Minister for Finance stood here and said that every constituency will get Kshs1 million for football. What informed that decision that the amount should be Kshs1 million? Constituencies are not of the same size, neither do they have the same number of youths. When you give them Kshs1 million, do they even have facilities for playing football? How many constituencies have stadia? So, that seems like a political and populist whim. We cannot develop a country that way. We should have a set criteria to inform us as we make that sort of decision. When we say that we want to give funds to the youth to play football, have we looked at the population in that constituency? We need that information before we decide that we are giving them Kshs1 million each. Probably, we do not need Kshs1 million each. Some might need Kshs1 million and some might need Kshs5 million, if we are going to talk about equity. It is surprising that during the campaigns, some of the loudest campaigners were talking about equity in the distribution of national resources. Yet, their actions do not spell equity. Their actions actually perpetrate unequal distribution of wealth in this country; unequal distribution of development. I dare say that, that unequal distribution of national resources is what is ailing this country. It is what has resulted in the anger and the rage that the youths are exhibiting in this country. Finally, it exploded after the last general elections because of that anger. They are enraged that they are not being taken care of and yet, other places are being taken care of. For example, rural electrification has decided to borrow a leaf and use the same criteria as CDF to distribute the money for rural electrification. Now, that criteria is totally unsuitable for rural electrification because, right from the basis, some constituencies were more electrified than others. As a Member said in this House earlier on, if you are in a large district with several constituencies and your district was unfortunate enough to have a Minister, all the funds for the Rural Electrification Programme would go to the Minister's constituency. Right now, let us decide to distribute the funds almost equally across the constituencies. That means that the constituencies that are a bit more electrified than others continue to be more electrified. So, the Rural Electrification Programme then falls flat on its face because the constituencies that are behind in rural electrification remain behind. So, it is actually an example of perpetuating inequality in this country. So, we need a set criteria. Before we distribute Rural Electrification Programme funds, can we find out the level of electrification in that constituency and come up with a criteria on how to distribute those funds rather than saying: \"Kshs21 million across the board for every constituency.\" Constituencies are not of the same size. Further to that, we have actually continued to abuse our youth because of unequal 2916 PARLIAMETARY DEBATES October 22, 2008 distribution of resources. When we say that we are giving Kshs1 million to the youths in a constituency, have we looked at their population? We have not even looked at what their exact needs are. We are just saying: \"For every youth group, Kshs50,000.\" That is throwing money at poverty. You cannot end poverty by throwing money at poverty. The causes of poverty are different in every locality. We have to find out the cause of that poverty and go to the root cause. When you throw Kshs1 million to the youth groups and they divide it into Kshs50,000 per each youth group, many of them end up not utilising that money. Then we say that they have failed to pay. We even accuse them of being thieves and yet, they are not thieves. There are bigger thieves in this country than those youths. It is just that their capacity has not been built enough for them to utilise those funds. Yet we end up calling them thieves while I know that, in this country, we have got bigger thieves who have stolen a lot more than the Kshs50,000 that we have accused the youths of stealing. In fact, as I said yesterday, if Kenyans stop stealing for just five years, we would be a developed country. Now, we are throwing Kshs1 million to every constituency and each youth group will get Kshs50,000. How many youths are there in every constituency? Have we based it on the population of the youth? What is their capacity to utilise those funds? Have we actually put on funding for entrepreneurship training before we give them that money? If we are going to give Kshs50,000 per youth group, how many youth groups do we have in that constituency? We are actually perpetrating inequality in this country to the extent that some constituencies are better endowed, their youths are better trained to utilise that money for entrepreneurship, while those that are not cannot utilise that money. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, even if they were able to utilise the money, the constituencies with large populations of youth are not served equitably, yet we stood up on platforms of equity as we campaigned for votes in this country. That means that we, politicians, are ending up being liars to our constituents. We cheat them, so that we can get their votes. Once we get their votes, we perpetuate the same inequality that has destroyed this country since Independence. There are many examples. Take the District Roads Fund, which is another interesting Fund. Some funds go to the constituencies while some go to the districts. We are not looking at the sizes of these constituencies or districts and the road networks. Districts have different levels of road network, and the weather also differs. If you go to western Kenya now, you will find that all the roads were washed away about three months ago by the heavy rains. You will find that there is a very large road network in every constituency, yet we insist on giving almost the same amount of money per constituency, per district. You will find that some districts have better road networks than others. Eventually, the loser is the Member of Parliament, because the constituents will look at you as the person who has failed to repair the roads, yet the amount of money you got was not enough. If you have a smaller constituency and you have Kshs14 million, you can do a lot more. But if you have a large constituency and a large road network and you have Kshs14 million, you cannot do anything. The devolved funds should not be looked at as \"devolved poverty\". We are devolving funds in such a way that essentially, we are devolving poverty. The constituencies that should actually get more money are getting less. If we come up with criteria for each devolved Fund that is actually tried and tested, especially scientific criteria, then we will achieve a certain measure of affirmative action for the marginalised areas of this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, indeed, there are marginalised areas in this country. We cannot hide from that. We want to create a Ministry for our marginalised areas, and we vote very little money to its coffers, yet it is very simple. If we sat down and looked at proper formulae for distributing these funds, then we would not need that kind of a thing. We have refused to use October 22, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2917 the brains that we have in this country. I am sure the Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030 has enough personnel to achieve this. There is KIPPRA under the Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030. The Ministry should come up with criteria for each devolved fund. Since the Motion by Mr. Kaino went through, soon, if every constituency becomes a district, those devolved funds, therefore, will have to be equitably distributed. Otherwise, if the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of an area is high, for example it is Kshs200, and the GDP of another area is Kshs50, and you do not have an affirmative action to bring the lower GDP up, then we will never have equal development in this country. The reason why I have addressed this Motion to the Prime Minister's office is very simple. The Prime Minister is the co-ordinator and the supervisor of the Cabinet. These devolved funds come from the various Ministries. It is a cross-cutting issue. The Prime Minister should use his supervisory skills to make sure that all the Ministries that are distributing devolved funds actually use a reasonable criteria, so that we distribute these funds equitably. At the end of the day, we cannot say that we are developing a nation, if we do not have a set way of doing it. It is a concerted effort. It is not an accident. Development is not an accident. The way we are going about it in this country, with big slogans like \"Vision 2030: and the \"water for all by year so and so\", will not work. That is sloganeering! That is not development! Development is not an accident! Development is not an accident. It is a concerted effort by a people to move in a particular direction. That effort has to be directed. The only direction we can get is proper, tried and tested criteria for distributing funds for development. If we do not do that, what happened at the end of elections last year will look like a picnic. Right now, the unequal distribution of wealth in the country is boiling just below the surface. This is our chance to correct that. We have got the knowledge, capability and the human resource to do that. I do not see what is difficult about sitting down and coming up with a criteria to distribute road funds or rural electrification funds equitably. They were using CDF criteria which is totally unsuitable. Let us take the example of the Kshs1 million which was allocated to the youths for every constituency. Is it so difficult to get the number of youths in that constituency and, therefore, know how much money they require? It is not difficult. It is because we have resorted to populist political moves that endear us to the electorate briefly for purposes of vote harvesting and at the end of it, we forget them. I think we need to come away from that thinking from now hence forth. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to end by stating that in order to remedy this situation and ensure equity in the distribution of national resources, this House resolves that any distribution of present and future devolved funds, take into consideration all factors that may influence the impact of these funds such as population structure, size, poverty index and prevalence of certain population variables per constituency. The Government should call on relevant bodies such as KIPPRA to do the necessary calculations and come up with appropriate formulae for such fund distribution. I urge the Right hon. Prime Minister to utilise his role as the co-ordinator of the Cabinet to ensure that every Ministry that disburses devolved funds e.g. energy, youth, gender, roads, health, use reasonable and measurable variables to calculate the funds due to each constituency or district. This way, we will be able to achieve a reasonable level of equity and institute some measure of affirmative action for many of our marginalised communities. With those few remarks, I beg to move and request Mr. Kaino, since the Motions are intertwined, to second the Motion."
}