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{
"id": 184444,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/184444/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Maj-Gen. Nkaisserry",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Defence",
"speaker": {
"id": 192,
"legal_name": "Joseph Kasaine Ole Nkaissery",
"slug": "joseph-nkaissery"
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"content": " Thank you very much, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this very important Vote. From the outset, I would like to thank the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government for bringing this very important Vote which covers the local government authority. I very much concur with my colleagues who have spoken before me on the issue of district allocations. When you look at the district allocations, you will find that it has not been fairly distributed. For example, in Kajiado District we got a raw deal. We were given Kshs6 million for Ol Kejuado County Council. I can assure you that Ol Kejuado County Council starts from Hunters Lodge all the way to Suswa, Magadi and the border with Tanzania. But we were only given Kshs6 million. I would like to request the Minister to go back and re-look at these things afresh because it is very important to do so. Secondly, it is now about eight years since we introduced the Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF) and the Local Authorities Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP). They run into billions of Kenya Shillings. In this financial year alone, the Ministry is likely to give about Kshs9 billion to the LATF. For the last eight years, we can hardly see any tangible project funded through the LATF. It started with an allocation of Kshs1 billion and it was raised to about Kshs9 billion this financial year. In all county councils, especially, Ol Kejuado County Council where I come from, I do not see any tangible project funded through the LATF. I am 100 per cent sure that more than Kshs300 million has been allocated to Ol Kejuado County Council as LATF. I suppose that this LATF was meant to target areas like water, roads, physical planing of county councils, markets and so on, but we do not see this happening. Majority of our centres, for example, are extremely dirty and unplanned. If you take an example of Kshs700 million allocated to Nairobi City Council for building of schools, to me, that money should have gone to the cleaning of Nairobi River and removing garbage in this town. The same applies to all the other towns. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, physical planning in our local authorities is something which does not exist. I think it is very important that the Minister reigns in councillors to really come out. I think it is important that these councillors are actually challenged to keep their towns clean and well-planned. Unfortunately, this LATF and LASDAP money is planned and contracts are allocated at the local authorities headquarters in Nairobi. If you are allocating this money to local authorities, it should be planned and contracts awarded in the local authorities and not at the Local Government headquarters. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I would like to commend the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government for the Kshs5,000 that he has just given the councillors as part of their allowances. But this is a drop in the ocean. I would like to suggest to him to maybe go back to the Cabinet and bring a Paper. The welfare of our councillors needs to be taken care of. They October 14, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2693 should even get money from the Consolidated Fund, so that maybe we may see tangible results of the LATF. We are not seeing tangible results of LATF because of corruption. These fellows are underpaid. So, we want their welfare to be taken care of. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the next very important thing concerns education at the lower level, the issue of nursery school teachers. I would like to suggest to the Minister to factor in certain amounts of money for the local authorities to employ nursery school teachers. You have heard my colleague saying that there are empty classes in Nairobi. Some of these classes are meant for nursery schools, but the local authorities cannot afford to pay the teachers. So, we need to factor in an amount of money so that local authorities can employ nursery school teachers. The other very unfortunate thing is the level of education of our councillors. I think if we do proper constitutional reforms, the education level for councillors should be raised to, at least, O- Level, because maybe the major problem we have is planning. If you cannot make recommendations to the local authority for funding of some of the districts--- Maybe it is because the councillors never make recommendations to the Ministry because of lack of education. So, when we look at reforms, we need to factor in this issue of education to bring these guys to a higher level. I would also like to suggest to the Minister that he should consider the nomination term for councillors; just as the nomination of hon. Members is for five years, theirs should also be for a period of five years. We know that at this time there is a lot of fear that some councillors are going to lose their seats when 16 months lapse. So, we want to recommend that all the councillors nominated properly by their political parties should have a period of five years as is the life of Parliament, so that we do not get into this major problem of going back to nomination of councillors. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think what the Minister needs to do is to get out of Nairobi and tour all the local authorities and demand to see all the projects that have been funded, or recommended, through the Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF) and the Local Authorities Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP), so that we know which local authority has misused money. In my view, LATF money is a source of corruption in local authorities. Unless we correct this, we will continue losing money and getting a raw deal in this regard. It is a lot of money; we use Kshs9 billion, yet we cannot see any tangible results in terms of roads, water provision, cleaning of our towns and construction of new water sources. We do not have these! If the Minister considers all these recommendations, I think our local authorities are going to perform as expected. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}