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"speaker_name": "Mr. Oparanya",
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"legal_name": "Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this chance to contribute to this important Motion. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will start off by supporting the Motion. First of all, I want to thank the Minister for the way he moved the Motion and congratulate him for the good work he is doing at the Ministry of Local Government. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will further want to thank the Minister for increasing LATF from about Kshs5.6 billion to Kshs7.5 billion. However, LATF has been there for a long time and the CDF came the other day. I have asked here, severally, how LATF money is helping our people. I have not got the correct answer. Within my county council; Butere County Council, as soon as this money hits their accounts, it is withdrawn the next day and there is nothing for development. There is a provision that the LATF money should be used for debt resolution. So, councillors' allowances, salary arrears and statutory deductions have been paid from the LATF under the debt resolution provision. You will find that more LATF money is being used on debt resolution than on development activities. It is important for the Minister to bring an amendment to the law, so that LATF money is made strictly usable for development purposes. 2574 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES August 2, 2006 There is a provision that at least two councillors must sit on the CDF Committee. Some councillors are behaving as if the CDF is part of their money. They go around promising the electorate that they will do such and such projects using CDF. They often forget about LATF. Since councillors sit on the CDF Committees, I will request that Members of Parliament be allowed to sit on cess committees, so as to advise on some of the issues. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my local county council collects cess from sugar-cane growers.It collects about Kshs1.8 million every month from sugar-cane growers. This money is supposed to maintain infrastructure in our area. But if you go there, you will find that nothing is being done. That is why I am saying that hon. Members should be allowed to sit on the cess committees. The Minister should amend the Local Government Act, Cap. 265, to allow hon. Members to sit on cess committees. There are also too many local authorities, some of which are not economical. We should conduct a survey to do away with uneconomical local authorities. You will find that some local authorities do not pay their staff for over six months. How do we sustain such local authorities? It is important to have fewer local authorities that are able to pay their staff and councillors. It is also important to reduce the powers of the Local Government Minister. Section 5 of Cap. 265 gives a lot of powers to the Local Government Minister. If you have a rogue Minister, he will rock the boat. It is good that the Minister we have now is tolerant, and is not misusing those powers. Everything that is done in a local authority has to be approved by the Minister for Local Government. What is the use of having elected people at the grassroot level to make decisions, if such decisions have to come to Nairobi to be ratified by the Minister? The Minister for Local Government has the power to approve by-laws that come from local authorities. He has powers to approve the annual and supplementary budgets of local authorities. He also has powers to approve educational tours of councillors outside their local authorities areas. All these powers are given to one person who is not accountable. It is important for those powers to be reduced. The Minister has also powers to establish and abolish a local authority without reference to anybody. It is important for powers to establish and abolish local authorities to be given to the Electoral Commission of Kenya. It is important for the financial management of local authorities to be strengthened. You will also find that most of our local authorities are debt-ridden. In fact, my local county council has not been audited since 1988 when it was established. It is important for all local authorities to be audited whenever money is sent to them. Auditors go to our constituencies after every six months to audit CDF projects. But for local authorities, when money is sent to them nothing happens. So, it is important that the financial management and control of county councils are strengthened. I wish to thank the Minister, just as other hon. Members who spoke before me did. Nairobi now looks like a city. But the street lights that we see are confined to the City Centre. It is important to do the same to our estates. A few street lights that were installed in our estates have been vandalised. It is important that the Minister looks into that. The other issue that I would like to talk about is harassment of hawkers. We must treat hawkers as people who are part of us. We must look for a lasting solution to the problems of hawkers. Hawkers are everywhere in the world. They should be organised. They must have some streets where they should be allowed to sell their stocks at a particular time, as long as they keep such places clean. If hawkers are licensed and organised well, they can contribute a lot to the economy of this country. Instead of chasing them all over and clobbering them, they must be treated well because they are part of us. Some of the local authorities have no capacity to employ professionals like engineers and valuers. They cannot afford to pay for such services. It is important to make them able to access August 2, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2575 professional services. We should group councils to enable them source professional services as one group instead of employing professionals within individual county councils. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I should also comment on the issue of council chairmen and municipality mayors being elected directly. It is unfortunate that recently a woman councillor from our county council was sent away by her husband because of being locked up in a hotel for a week. When she came back home her husband sent her away. She was locked up in a hotel so as to vote for a particular man. This is an unfortunate thing to happen. This practice is barbaric and should be stopped. Before the next general election we must put in place minimal amendments to the Local Government Act, so that chairmen, mayors and deputy mayors are elected directly by the people. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}