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"speaker_name": "Maj. Sugow",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Public Service",
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"legal_name": "Aden Ahmed Sugow",
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"content": " Thank you very much, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. I would like to congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government for presenting this Vote. We would like very much to support Vote 12 in the House today. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, many Members rightly emphasized the importance of local government in this country and any modern country in the world today. The Ministry of Local Government is like the roots that hold a country. They are the ones in touch with the taxpayer on the ground. Therefore, the running of these institutions is very important even for the Central Government to be able to function properly. Therefore, this Ministry has a very great role to play, October 15, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2781 which everyone of us has to support, hence the need for us to wholly give support to the Minister on this particular Vote. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I only have three or four points to raise because many of the issues have been touched by my colleagues and I am not going to repeat them. There are many new districts that have been created recently in the country. Together with these districts, even some of the old towns in this country are not well planned. Councils are unable to carry out this task mainly because of lack of physical planning. There are no adequate physical planners in the country, particularly to support local authorities. I would urge the Minister to take this matter seriously and see how he can support local authorities to get physical planners to carry out this very important task. Besides, probably the indebtedness of the councils themselves, this particular matter is adding to the problem even further. Lack of planning of our towns is denying us development. The district that I come from, for example, is new. Its headquarters is not planned; there are no physical facilities for Government offices and building residential houses up to now. You cannot carry out this without any plan. Money has been allocated for planning in this financial year, but there are no physical planners. Even monies that we have allocated from the CDF on emergency basis for planning some of these towns are still lying idle four or five months down the line because of lack of physical planners. So, this is a very acute problem nationally. Hon. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government, you will remember that I met and discussed this matter with you. He understands the gravity of the matter. I hope he will be able to pay attention to it, because this issue is also denying the local authorities revenue. The other issue that we really need to address is land allocation. Nationally, I think there is still an embargo on land allocation. As a result, many of these local authorities, not only fail to plan the towns, but also do not give land regularly to the wananchi, through the right laid-down procedure. As a result, local councillors are taking their own initiatives to give pieces of land in their backyards at their personal level. The revenue out of that is misappropriated because it never gets to the local authority. What comes out as a result is very poorly settled towns, where there are no public amenities and the existing plots are not in the registers of these local authorities. Therefore, they are not generating any income for these local authorities. So, we are developing shanties instead of towns. This is a matter that goes to the core of the existence of the local authorities, especially the county councils. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the issue of remuneration of councillors is the one that is undermining their capacity, effectiveness and efficiency. Since there is no standardised payment or remuneration to councillors, and some of the local authorities do not have good bases from where they are supposed to get their allowances, many of them go without salaries for a long time. Coupled with the fact that in most of our towns we are not planning and, therefore, there is no regulated allocation of land, many of them are trying to use their offices for sustainability. We must, therefore, address this issue of remuneration to councillors, if we really want our councils to be efficient. They must get a reliable and standardised payment, and this can only be from the Exchequer. Many of our local authorities cannot support remuneration to councillors, even if it means reducing wards and councillors, for that matter. We must come up with a solution to the issue of remuneration of councillors if we really want these councils to deliver. The other issue is lack of capacity. Many of our councillors, once elected, are not fully exposed during the five year period to all the areas of work of a local authority. So, many of them are learning on the job, and do not know what they are doing. I urge the Minister to try and find ways of workshopping, or inducting, councillors to understand their roles in councils, so as to avoid conflicts between the chief officers and the councillors. 2782 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 15, 2008 The other issue concerns the Local Authorities Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP) projects, which are normally carried out in a manner that does not educate the communities first before they give their priorities. As a result, they come up with projects that are not necessarily of use to the community. Most of them become white elephant projects. Most of them are never completed. I know of projects in my constituency done halfway by LASDAP even before I became a Member of Parliament, and this is my second term. That means eight years down the line, those projects are not completed. Therefore, my request to the Minister is for him to review all the projects that were undertaken through LASDAP in the last ten years or so. For projects that have not been completed, the councils should be urged, or forced, to complete them before they can undertake other projects. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}