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    "id": 380945,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/380945/?format=api",
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    "content": "lead to a situation where there will be more than two people doing the same work; work that would have been done by one person. You have KERRA in the counties saying “These are our roads; we are going to do them” and we have the county governments saying “These are county roads, we need to do them;” but when they want to construct those roads, they do not have the resources because KURA is going to perform that function. Initially before we came up with the new Constitution, the central Government used to use the provincial administration, which involved districts in terms of execution of these functions. In those districts, there used to be the District Development Committees (DDCs). The Member of Parliament and the District Commissioner were sitting in DDCs. Now, the question I am asking myself is that these are the people who are organizing KERRA and KURA functions, where necessary; they were organizing electricity functions, and so forth. Now, shall we continue having situations where, in a district, the DDC is planning development in a constituency? At the same time, the county government is planning development at the county. This parallelism has not been made very clear. If all functions are being devolved to the counties, it must be very clear that these functions shall be planned and resources given after being costed. The institutions that used to perform these functions must tell us that they are winding up and, at what time period, so that we do not have an engineer reporting to KERRA instead of reporting to the county government. If you come to health, it is the same. I have noted that this Bill talks about all resources being allocated to the counties and that they are going to perform all functions for the counties. However, if you look at the Finance Bill that was passed by the National Assembly and which has the budget for the national Government, you will still find considerable amounts of resources for hiring doctors, nurses; for equipping hospitals and for supply of medicines still being budgeted at the national level. So, that confusion is basically what led us to saying that for effective running of functions at the county, we needed to increase the amount going to counties to Kshs258 million. Madam Temporary Speaker, I think this policy position must be made clear. It is this House that must give direction through its relevant Committees as to how we will move forward. This is for the record, even after we pass this County Allocation of Revenue Bill, there shall be a crisis out there. The crisis will be whether competence and capacity for counties was assessed. For example, already doctors and nurses are saying: “We cannot be paid by county governments.” The other day, I met another doctor and he told me “Can you imagine me being paid by the county government?” The perception they had was that, as a doctor in Elgeyo-Marakwet County--- I must confess here that in my county, we do not have a single hospital that is run by the national Government. This means that every health officer there is an officer of the county government. All health facilities in Elgeyo-Marakwet are for the county government. So, anyone who will be hired to work in that county shall be paid by my county. However, I can tell you that the county has no capacity today to pay doctors or The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}