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"id": 184446,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/184446/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Balala",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Tourism",
"speaker": {
"id": 9,
"legal_name": "Najib Mohamed Balala",
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"content": " Thank you very much, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to actually comment on the budget of His Excellency the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government. This is a pet project for me. It is a pet subject for me as a former Mayor of Mombasa. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I see that we are spending a lot of money as a Government - Kshs12.5 billion. That is a lot of money! I wish we can see anything tangible that is being done well in those towns and cities. The salaries for councillors and staff is not much. It is only Kshs159 million. What happens to the rest of the money, over Kshs11 billion? Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I appreciate the dilemma the Deputy Prime Minister has gone through, because this is not his budget. This is a budget that he has inherited without a serious formula of where we are going to move the country! We have Vision 2030. How has Vision 2030 been linked with local authorities? That is because, at the end of the day, if we do not have the vision from the grassroots, then the national agenda will not be achieved! Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to say that, among the Kshs12.5 billion, Kshs9 billion is for the Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF). In the last eight years - and I was the architect of LATF, which was meant to benefit local authorities - it has failed! It is a failure! Today, LATF is actually a conduit to just siphon money from the taxpayers! Today, LATF is even perceived to be handouts to the local authorities. There are no means of revenue generation from the local authorities, apart from waiting for LATF. It might be much or not much but, actually, a lot of money is being siphoned! If you go to the constituencies and the municipalities, you will see that the projects that flourish and shine are those ones by the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). When you go to the ground, you hardly see any LATF projects! If you finally see them because you make noise as the Member of Parliament and the public, I can tell you it will be a half-baked project that is never finished! If you come to my constituency, most of those projects are half- baked! Then, we have to come and supplement them. We want co-operation between CDF and the local authorities. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to speak specifically on governance. Governance is what is itching local authorities! That is the issue that, if you do not address it properly, you will not get the value for all the money we have invested in the last eight years! Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we have had Ministers coming in and going. In 1998, Prof. Ongeri was here. When I resigned, Prof. Ongeri was here as the Local Government Minister. They have talked about \"mayors by the people\". Since then - and it is now almost ten years - we have not seen tangible efforts of bringing such changes in the local authorities. Governance is the key! I believe we are all waiting for the new Constitution. Cap.265 is the Act of Parliament for local governments and local authorities. Why can we not change Cap.265, do those changes and bring effectiveness to our country and develop faster? If you say: \"mayors be elected by the 2696 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 14, 2008 people\", then all the chief officers should be appointed through a competitive bid and advertisement of their positions! If you have those chief officers being moved and the criteria of being moved is experience, just with the same syndrome of status quo, then I am sorry! We will never achieve good governance in the local authorities! We need to empower the local leaders who will be elected by the people. We do not want to see that everything is centralized in the capital. We empower the Minister to take all the decisions which, sometimes, affect the regions! In the spirit of devolution, the most powerful one is the local authority! Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, unfortunately, local authorities are being seen addressing issues of kiosks, hawkers and garbage. Local authorities in the world are about investments! They are about attracting investments to their regions, creating employment and investment conferences. They transform development down, left, right and centre for the private sector to develop the economy. The minute the private sector wants to develop an investment in a certain area, the first people to block them are the councillors! They want kitu kidogo ! The chief officers and everybody need to be bribed! The biggest corruption in this country is in the local authorities We have to face it head on! Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, revenue generation is very poor! We, in Mombasa, sit on the biggest asset in this country - the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), which is a port. We do not even benefit a penny! Let us get a revenue levy for the Mombasa Municipal Council! If we do not trust the leadership of Mombasa, then we can create a private sector body which will manage how that money is going to be spent! Mombasa is the second largest city in the country! The image of the country is not necessarily in the rural areas. In fact, it is in the big cities! That is the image of the country. When you go to Paris, there is a lot of crime. But it is not in the central business district of Paris, London or New York! That has been taken care of! But when you look at our local authorities, they do not have plans. They do not have qualified engineers. They are the ones who are messing up! We are told that there are no funds to recruit! Advertise those positions and pay! If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys! That is what is happening in our local authorities! Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is important for us to think broadly and in a modern society! We can say that we establish metropolitan boards to supervise local authorities in regions like the Coast, Kisumu, Naivasha and Nakuru. There are areas with potential for investment in agriculture and tourism. We cannot avoid them. It is important for us to bring up a subject on executive advisory authority - a metropolitan body - so that it can manage these areas and advise councillors and chief executive officers. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the issue of education for councillors and local authorities' staff has been mentioned. It is critical. However, the issue is not about a university degree. The issue is the intellectual understanding of the responsibility of leadership to transform and help our people. We do not have that kind of understanding amongst councillors. That is why the mindset of councillors and officers in local authorities is about garbage and kiosks . That is what has reduced them. They have the capacity to be brought to a higher level. Maybe, we should improve their salaries, like we have done for Members of Parliament. Even business people who are multi-millionaires have vacated their positions in their private businesses; they want to be Members of Parliament. Let us improve the salaries of councillors, so that we can attract high calibre individuals to lead local authorities. For instance, City of Mombasa, which is the second-largest city in Kenya, has not been allocated much money. It is the image and the gateway for East and Central Africa. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, there should have been a proper plan for City of Mombasa. We need a dual carriageway heading to airport. Why can we not build a bridge across the Likoni channel so as to do away with ferry services? What rock science is inhibiting us from October 14, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2697 doing so? We are frustrating investment. We are not opening up the South Coast in Kwale and elsewhere, where there is land for development. Instead, we are congesting the Island. What is inhibiting us from addressing the issues affecting our cities, particularly City of Mombasa? We should have dual carriageway from Moi International Airport, Mombasa, to Mtwapa. If you go to Mombasa today and see the state of roads there, you will cry. Only 10 per cent of the Municipal Council of Mombasa is covered by a sewerage system. Where does 90 per cent of the sewage go? It is destroying our environment and the Indian Ocean. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I now want to address the issue of privatisation of local authority. We thought that privatising certain functions of local authorities would improve efficiency. However, what we have in place is a conduit for just siphoning money from there. The process has brought a bunch of people in the name of international companies, who have been awarded tenders. They are \"eating\" our money, and yet we do not see any changes. It is, therefore, important for us to see to it that local authorities become the vehicles for attracting investment for our region, so that they can develop rather than having \"small\" minds, where we just address issues of hawking and garbage collection. That is the only thing we cry about every day. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, as much as we now look into the aspect of decentralising, it is important for us to consider transforming constituencies into boroughs, particularly in urban areas. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}