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{
    "id": 406440,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/406440/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 344,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Lonyangapuo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 447,
        "legal_name": "John Krop Lonyangapuo",
        "slug": "john-lonyangapuo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. I rise to also support this Motion by the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. (Prof.) Kindiki. Coincidentally, Tharaka-Nithi County happens to be where he comes from. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as has been described here, there are three peculiar counties that have no county assemblies at all. I was the Permanent Secretary then and can confirm this. As earlier mentioned by Sen. Obure, who was the Minister for Public Works, we did read the Constitution immediately it was promulgated on 27th August, 2010, at exactly 10.27 a.m. We read Section 15(2) of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which declares that we need to have places where the 47 county assemblies will sit. We sent our officers to go round the entire country and look at the facilities that were available. We shared with the President who directed that we sit down with the Minister for Finance at that time, Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta, who happens now to be our President and he listened to the whole team. We took photographs of the whole buildings that were supposed to be used by officers. It was so interesting to know that there are some places like Tana River where people were going to sit in makeshift structures and transact business. So, we categorized them into three. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the first category was the ones with nothing and there are three of them. The second category has 17 such counties with facilities that do not resemble anything. The third category was made up of improved municipal offices, but also did not look like assemblies. What we had in mind was to build county assemblies that were a replica across the country so that when the Head of State moves from Nairobi, he would see tiny replicas of county assemblies which would give meaning to devolution. So, when we came up with this idea, we were even given money to go and do benchmarking in South Africa, India and Canada. We were allocated money but the moment we called all the 300 consultants for a conference for one week, the Commission on the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC) came from nowhere with some rules that there must first exist a Governor and then a county assembly follows. I think we are very clear that county assemblies are not related to the Governors. The Governor is executive and the county assemblies are the legislature headed by a Speaker. So, when the people we had entrusted with this came up with very loud noise, we tried to explain to them what we were doing but we could not manage to convince them. The Ministry of Local Government was of the view that the Ministry of Public Works had taken their work and that is how the whole drama went to the extent that we took out two pages of daily newspapers to explain that we intended to do this in good 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."
}