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"content": "this Schedule. This is because if it is duly adopted by the Senate, it must be complied with. It is part of the law. It is a legal requirement that the national Treasury must comply with. Therefore, whatever amount of money has been indicated for each county government must be released, latest, by the15th of each month for the money relating to the following month. For example, if money for October has not gone into your county by 15th September, it is a matter that you can raise and the national Treasury has to explain, because that is the law and requirement. This is to ensure that counties can carry out their operations, and their services do not stop. In that regard, therefore, county governments are required to prepare very good operational expenditure budgets. If that is not done properly and itemized in detail, then they will not be able to plan for the money properly, and that is our concern. We do not want to see counties, in their first year of operation, shutting down hospitals because they have run out of medicine, or in the first year of operations, having strikes because they are not able to pay salaries for their workers. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, all these can happen if they are not able to plan. That would really work against the whole concept of devolution, for which the county governors and governments have really been agitating. But as a Senate that has a mandate, under Article 96 of the Constitution, to look after the interests of the county governments, it is our responsibility to ensure--- In this regard, the Controller of Budget has the responsibility in law to look at each of those budgets and ensure that they comply with the law. In this regard – and I am sure that Members are aware - there is a report that was tabled here last week from the Controller of Budget. These reports will come quarterly. In other words, every quarter, the Senate will get a copy of the report by the Controller of Budget that will look at the utilization of the money that has been disbursed by each county. That is something which will be tabled here. The first report for the quarter ending 30th June, has been tabled in this House and will probably be debated in the coming weeks. So, the next quarter for the month ending October must be with us at the end of the following month. So, I think that those reports will give us an insight into how the counties are utilizing their money. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, there is an important point that we need to mention when we talk of counties planning prudently in their operational budgets. If you look at how some counties have done their budgets, especially for development, it leaves a lot to be desired. They have spread the money too thinly, over thousands of small projects across all the wards, to the extent that a particular county may have to carry out 2,000 or 3,000 little projects of a Kshs1 million or Kshs2 million each. This presents challenges, both in terms of allocating the money across and also in terms of optimizing the utilization of the money. That is one of the challenges that I think the Senators, in their mandate of oversight, will be looking at when we get those reports from the Controller of Budget. Therefore, this schedule is very important because it helps the counties to plan their inflows. 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."
}