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{
    "id": 396366,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/396366/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 99,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Machage",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 179,
        "legal_name": "Wilfred Gisuka Machage",
        "slug": "wilfred-machage"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this report is just a random sample of what is likely to be happening in very many counties in this country. All that has been done is a lot of hiding in transparency. The powers the governors purport to be wielding will cause a lot of foot sores everywhere they would want to step without thinking about the implications of the Constitution and the law on matters that they command. What you see in this report as put forward by the Controller of Budget and also as recommended to us by our own Senate Committee on Finance, Commerce and Economic Affairs---. This is what I would term in summary as total mischief by both the office of the Controller of Budget and the executive office in Turkana County. On page 16 if you look at the increases vis-à-vis the decreases, this information that is tabulated on this pamphlet really tells you that the governor knew what he was doing. There is no excuse here that there were mechanisms not in place as given to us by the Controller of Budget on page 19 (2) where she is thinking of non-inclusion of additional votes. There was an inclusion of additional votes intentionally. The Controller of Budget says that Turkana County did not have a Budget Officer. Whose mistake is that? Is it a calculated move by the office of the Controller of Budget to have some counties fail, by not availing the relevant officers in the sensitive budgetary process? God knows what the intention was, not forgetting that Turkana is one of the marginalized, hitherto considered backward places in this country. What was the intention? That is what should be investigated. It was a calculated move by the governor’s office to either interfere with the budget process or to intentionally just increase the amount of money that he wanted in his office, to the detriment of other departments in that county. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this shows that there is need for us to review the laws on the functions of the Senators. If the law mandated the Senator to look at the final draft of the Budget before it is presented to the office of the Controller of Budget, I am sure this would not have arisen because the Senator would have listened to the complaints of the House and compared it with the information and records that have been put forward as generated by the office of the Governor. We do not have that power. Indeed, I wonder how many of us in this House have even seen the budgets of their counties. I tried to ask for the drafts, but I was never given until I gave up. I had no constitutional mandate to force them to give them to me. This is one of the areas that really need to be looked at in law. I always keep on saying that the Constitution as was passed had a lot of lacunas that need to be looked at, especially so in this area of financial management. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the law needs to be revised totally to make sure that a Senator has a bigger say on the final examination of the Budget presented to the office of the Controller of Budget. Since we were passing that Budget just to please an individual’s legacy, then here we are and we have to accept it and work with it. 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."
}