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{
    "id": 385044,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/385044/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 57,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sang",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 907,
        "legal_name": "Stephen Kipyego Sang",
        "slug": "stephen-kipyego-sang"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I am going to take less than the available 25 minutes, because I guess that all of us in this House would want to ventilate on this issue. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I mentioned yesterday, I support this Motion. Our constitutional responsibility as the Senate is to protect and serve the interests of the counties. This Bill provides us with an opportunity to execute our constitutional mandate of protecting the interest of counties. You cannot protect the interests of counties if you cannot allocate adequate resources to these counties. It does not make any sense for somebody to imagine that a whole Senate – our responsibility being to protect interest of counties – would only concentrate on dividing and sharing the revenue that the Lower House has made a determination on. What if, for example, the Lower House decides in its wisdom or lack of it, that we only have Kshs100 billion to share amongst our counties? It does not make sense. We cannot concentrate on just the sharing formula among counties without having a say in the amount of national Revenue that will come down to the county governments. The Division of Revenue Bill gives us that opportunity. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the success of the new Constitution will entirely depend on the success of devolution. If we are not going to have our counties taking shape and succeeding in providing services to our Kenyans, then we will have failed in our new constitutional dispensation. I want to propose that this House carefully considers the Division of Revenue Bill for two reasons; one, as a way of asserting our authority as the Senate in terms of protecting the interests of our counties. But more importantly, arising from yesterday’s debate in the Lower House, in terms of asserting our authority as the Upper House, so that we should not be seen as a rubberstamp of what the Lower House has given us. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at the Fourth Schedule of the new Constitution, it has in part “1” enumerated the 35 functions allocated to the national Government. In part “2”, it has given the 14 functions allocated to the county governments. If we take agriculture, for example, the Constitution under the Fourth Schedule indicates that agricultural policy will be handled by the national Government. But the actual implementation of agricultural policies will be done by the county governments. This would translate to almost 20 per cent of the Ministry of Agriculture currently being retained at the national level and 80 per cent being taken back to the county governments. It only means then that about 80 per cent of the resources previously allocated to the Ministry of Agriculture need to be devolved to the county governments. The same thing applies to the Ministry of Health. We have only two referral hospitals in this country, and I support our colleague, Prof. Anyang’-Nyong’o, for bringing a Bill that would then be able to broadly define what referral health facilities in this country are. This will enable us to have at least one or two referral hospitals in each of the 47 counties in this country. I come from Nandi County where we have one district 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."
}