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"content": "hospital that serves close to three counties, that is, County of Nandi, County of Vihiga, where my colleague comes from and the County of Uasin Gishu. Some of us still go to Kapsabet District Hospital. We cannot leave the district hospital in Kapsabet as a responsibility of Nandi County. We need to have that taken over by the national Government, so that then our county governments could concentrate on the health centres and other hospitals within our counties in order to provide services. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at the roads, the Fourth Schedule indicates that national roads will be handled by the national Government, but the county roads, which constitute about 70 per cent of the road network in this country, will be handled by the county government. That also means that we have to send a lot of resources to the counties. Therefore, as a Member of the Jubilee side, whereas we want to appreciate the Jubilee Government, through the Treasury in terms of raising the revenue allocated to county governments to around 30 per cent, that is not adequate. I think that this House must rise up to the occasion and raise these resources. At the appropriate time – I am sure at the Committee stage – some of these figures will be raised. I think that we need to work with the figures given to us by the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA). We can push this allocation to Kshs238 billion to provide enough and adequate resources to the county governments. If you look at the Division of Revenue Bill, the national Treasury did propose Kshs154 billion and the National Assembly, in its wisdom, raised it to Kshs190 billion. I think that it is important for this House not just to rubberstamp the figure from the Lower House, but to raise it a little bit higher, so that we can assert our authority as a House and still be seen as playing our constitutional role of protecting and serving the interests of the counties. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to propose that there is need for us to do proper costing for the various functions to the county governments. We have the Transition Authority that was given this specific mandate. As the Senator for Nandi, I keep on wondering what the Transition Authority has been doing for the last one and a half or two years. One of their core responsibilities was to do the proper costing of the functions. The figures used by the national Treasury in terms of doing the costing, most likely are historical. This could as well be relating to the costing of the financial year 2010/2011, just like the revenue proportions sent to the county governments. So, we need to do proper costing of the functions that have been allocated to the county governments, so that we are able to have accurate figures. If we do not do proper costing, then even as we send these resources to the county governments, it is possible that the budgeting process at the county governments will not be proper, because the figures that they will be able to allocate to development and recurrent expenditure, will be fairly conservative and we may end up using a lot of the resources that we are sending to the to the county governments on recurrent expenditure. Therefore, we will have very little resources available for development activities within the counties. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is also important that we are able to enhance the capacity of county governments in developing their budgets. Some of us have had an opportunity to look at some of the budgets emanating from the county governments. If we are not careful, a lot of the resources that we are devolving and sending, as a Senate, to the county governments, may as well all go to recurrent expenditure. We need to enhance the capacity of the counties. We need the county governments to have the 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."
}