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{
    "id": 389247,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/389247/?format=api",
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    "content": "advertisements in the newspapers calling for participation and for people to attend their various meetings so that they begin to input in the process. By law, this should guide the county budgeting, project funding, monitoring and evaluation so that there is clarity. Depending on the county and the expertise they can accrue within the county, different strategic plans or CIDPs will come up as a result. Those who can engage consultants who are good in areas of planning will come up with clear indicators and will, therefore, have objective plans that are measurable and which they can hold themselves accountable to. That is the key thing. Counties should hold themselves accountable to their plans and find a mechanism of making their plans public not only to members of the counties but also to members of the whole Republic. At the end of the five years, we should use this as the basis for evaluation for specific counties vis-a-vis the challenges and difficulties. This will allow us to see to what extent they have achieved the key objectives they had set for themselves. Citizen participation is critical to devolution. Citizens will not engage if these county plans have not been made visible. We will discuss this as the Senate but one of the ways is to lay out the final integrated plan, put it in the newspaper or put it on the internet so that people can hold counties accountable. With all that is happening and all the amount of money that has gone into counties with fears of misusing the funds and corruption in the counties, if we focus on the negatives, we will lose sight of all the positives that are meant to help counties to develop. If this is put into operation, if it is fully explained and initialized in every county, we will be emphasizing it now rather than later. We cannot wait for five years and then come up to say that these are the indicators that we should have used or what should have been done. That will already be lost time. So, this is the time now that all the indicators have to be clearly explained. Experts have to talk about the measurability standards and agree about them so that when it comes to formulating the plans, we are clear about what is happening. We get interested in this because as the Senate, according to Article 98, we represent the counties and protect the interests of those counties. If counties are successful, that is something that is directly related to us. How will we, as a Senate, evaluate the various reports and the targets that have been set if the indicators that have been set are not clearly stipulated? The Motion reads that this responsibility has already been given to the Council of Governors. The mechanism is that they will come up with specific reports. However, the Senate needs to have an interest in what the Council of Governors is coming up with so that it can control and measure the final product within particular counties so that they monitor and see whether the benchmarking has been adhered to. Various counties are working on that. County plans will consist of various issues like medium term plans, priorities for county governors, specific goals and objectives, implementation plans, provisions of monitoring and evaluation within each of those specific counties. The County Governments Act, again, Article 106(4) provides for citizen participation and I added that. It also goes on to say how the citizen participation can be enhanced through county budgets and economic forums, through county citizen engagement frameworks, county communication platform strategies and county civic 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."
}