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{
    "id": 397856,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/397856/?format=api",
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    "content": "million in a governor’s house when the Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) in the counties have nothing in them; children are learning under trees and yet you want to put up Kshs200 million for the governor’s house, then something is amiss. That is why this House, which is an oversighting House, must never allow such things to happen. Members of the County Assembly are also an oversighting institution and must ensure that such a thing does not happen. Expenditure at the county level must be approved by the county assemblies. Therefore, we are saying that the expenditure should have been prioritized by all arms of the government at the county level. We have already seen that the Director of Budget and the Controller of Budget are raising alarm about procurement procedures used at the county level. We are again saying that the budget process must be strictly followed. The expenditure process must be strictly followed and that we do not want to hear of situations where expenditure was authorized without due process. There has been requisition of services without due process being followed by the county governments. That is very clear. One of the main challenges, as people have said in the previous Motion, is the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). If we were to implement IFMIS in its proper format, then you would find that many counties would have higher capacity for implementation than they currently have. They are supposed to submit quarterly reports to this House and to the national Treasury so that we vet and see how money is being spent at the county level. Similarly, we are urging county governments to invest in the future. Let us not be people who know about spending. Let us also invest in areas which can give us revenue. Let us invest in building human capacity and resource. As the Chairman of the Committee on Education, Information and Technology, I am also urging that county governments put in sufficient amounts of money to look after the smallest children in our schools. We have seen, in our visits, situations where four year old pupils are spending a whole day sitting somewhere under a tree with no water or food, in a place where they call a school. Those children hate school. When we are in a nation where a four or five year old hates school, then we are sitting on a time bomb. Therefore, in terms of priorities, counties ought to be giving a meaning to devolved governments and to taking over devolved governments. This can be well demonstrated if the counties were to start building institutions for the youngest people in our nation. Therefore, we launched, as a Committee, what we are calling “the best classroom in the school” meaning that the best classroom ought to belong to the youngest members of that school; that is the kindergarten and the Early Childhood Development (ECD) learning facilities that exist in every school in our country. With those few remarks, I beg to move and ask Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o to second the Motion."
}