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    "id": 396394,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/396394/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 127,
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    "content": "I want to also point out that the budget estimates were prepared long before the county integrated development plans were done in various counties. I do not think that is the right way to go. We have followed what national governments have done in the past. In the past, national governments used to ask respective districts to prepare five-year development plans which were never followed. In the past also, the Treasury and the Ministry of Planning and Devolution did not play a complementary role at the national level in the past. They performed their roles in an isolated and compartmentalized manner. We are trying to transfer the same things to counties even under the devolved system. I say so, because we just went for a validation workshop in our respective counties. I think we had our validation workshops about three weeks ago. Which one comes before the other? Planning must precede funding. It must come before funding. That is why we have budgets that are incompatible with the needs of the people. I slightly want to differ with one Senator, I cannot remember his name, who said that classrooms are being considered in budgets and that classrooms of primary and secondary schools must be approved by the national Government. We know that there are concurrent functions which either level of government can undertake with some agreements. We have just passed a Motion in this Senate urging the national Government to allow the county government to take over primary and secondary school education and not only early childhood education (ECD). I do not know how many counties have so far gone into formal agreements with the national Government. So, if we have to factor in budgets for particular functions that are not assigned to counties, then the functions have to be delegated, if they have not been given by the Constitution to counties. We are all performing complementary roles; the Senate, county governments and the national Government. We need to do this in a harmonised way without compromising the quality, vision of the people and our development aspirations. The truth of the matter is that there were fundamental weaknesses regarding the planning and budgetary processes that were undertaken by the county governments. I say so, because there are guidelines that were provided by the Transition Authority (TA). I read through the guidelines. Somewhere in one of the pages, it says; they could put, at least, 30 per cent of the total budgetary provisions for the year to development estimates. If we spend 70 per cent of all that you get on recurrent expenditure, honestly, when will we develop those areas? We will not develop them. Therefore, we need to debate, in this House, the guidelines for budgetary processes and planning processes so that we set standards and benchmarks for the county governments. We should check the national Government on how best it is guiding the county governments. My two last items are on capacity building. I hear of capacity building from the TA, but I hold a different view. I have a feeling that the TA is a group that wanted to safeguard its jobs. However, they should capacity-build people. I have said this before and a number of colleagues have spoken about it. You can only capacity-build people when they are already doing a job. So, we still require capacity-building. The Centre for Parliamentary Studies and Training (CPST) under Parliament has done a good job for counties so far. We got engaged with them and we need to link our county governments with the CPST which has a director. This is an institution we can 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."
}