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{
"id": 393499,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/393499/?format=api",
"text_counter": 187,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Ongoro",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 125,
"legal_name": "Elizabeth Ongoro Masha",
"slug": "elizabeth-ongoro"
},
"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, if this person just decides to buy them lunch every day, what kind of decisions do you think we are going to get from these kind of county governments? Do you think anything is going to be interrogated? So, sometimes in attempting to save, we might actually lose more. We might think that, as a Government, we are saving by not giving these people just a small salary increment, but by extension, what we might lose as a Government by paying them peanuts runs into hundreds of billions. Because if you do not remunerate somebody well, you do not expect him, first, to give his best; secondly, to attend all meetings; thirdly, to interrogate effectively and, fourth, to report any misconduct when he finds one. Instead, if he notices anything, he will go to bargain with that to that officer and then he will be sorted out at a personal level, and then he leaves. That officer will squander Kshs1 billion and give this man Kshs200, 000. Since he needs it so much, the country loses a billion or something like that. So, really, let us relook at this issue. Commissioner Serem is telling us now that she wants to undertake an evaluation; an evaluation of what? These people are office holders who have already been evaluated by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and found fit to hold those offices. Is she starting afresh? Are we reinventing the wheel? What is she going to evaluate? Is she going to come up with a proposal, for example, that they should be remunerated according to the varying educational levels? That will cause another stalemate and a bigger problem than this. I really want to communicate to Commissioner Serem, if only she could open her eyes and understand that, that one office can actually derail devolution. It can actually bring this Government to its knees by simply refusing to facilitate and ensure that county governments are run smoothly. She should understand that every statement she makes affects every corner of this nation and almost every household, because we are dealing with MCAs who are really dealing with people at a closer level. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to request her to rethink her strategy; to rethink her hard stand on these issues; to probably set up a small committee between all the various MCAs from the 47 counties – maybe a person from each county – to deal directly with her office and then they come up with some resolutions and recommendations that could then be presented to the Executive for consideration. Without that, I want to state that even as we speak on this issue, governors are expending. They are moving on without the arm that is supposed to interrogate their expenditure. So, by the time we probably sort out this issue, so much will have been expended without oversight or interrogation. Maybe somebody somewhere is really enjoying this stalemate because for them, it is even good. These people who were really giving them problems and were interrogating their every move are actually out of office for now and, so, they can implement the 90 per cent of the things that they really wanted to implement. By the time the MCAs come back to occupy their offices, there will be no money left for even interrogation any more."
}