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{
    "id": 418586,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/418586/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 192,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mwaura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13129,
        "legal_name": "Isaac Maigua Mwaura",
        "slug": "isaac-mwaura"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Speaker. I rise to support this Motion. I want to recapitulate what I said yesterday, that if you look at the amount of money we are proposing to go to the counties--- The idea of having Kshs1.4 billion given to village polytechnics is very welcome. If you calculate you will see that every county will receive Kshs29.2 million. This will also take care of young people who drop off the educational system. The statistics show that if you look at the year 2005, pupils who showed up for Class One were 1.3 million, but those who finished Class Eight were actually about 630,000. If you look at this cumulatively for eight years, you can see clearly that we have an army of young people, who are not getting proper education and, therefore, cannot do proper literacy and numeracy skills. Hon. Speaker, if you look again at the amount of money that is being proposed to support service delivery in various counties there is a high number of public servants. It is important because all counties must move forward in development. No county should be seen to be deprived of development money simply because it took over a huge workforce from the national Government and the former local authorities. However, if you followed the conversation on the issue of wage bill, it has been said on this Floor of the House that we need to reduce the number of nominated hon. Members of Parliament, county women representatives, hon. Members and Senators. I beg to differ. If you look at the cumulative amount of funds that are actually used on these nominees, it is actually less than half a billion. Whatever Parliament gets compared to the Executive’s allocation, its share is only Kshs16 billion out of a Budget of over Kshs1 trillion. Hon. Speaker, the wage bill debate, in my opinion, is, therefore, actually misguided; if you look at our wage bill, we are only spending about Kshs300 billion and not the purported Kshs500 billion. I note with concern the fact that if you look the wastage in Government, we still have over Kshs330 billion being lost to corruption, leakage and misappropriation. There are also allegations of existence of ghost workers, who need to be eliminated. Our parastatals are gobbling up to Ksh140 billion a year; there are 247 of them. This House and the previous Houses have actually established various implementing agencies in the various statutes that have been passed. I think it is high time we looked at whether there is actually value for our money with regard to this. I rise to support this Motion but with a caveat that we cannot say we are reducing the wage bill when we are also reducing representation of marginalized groups, special interest groups and women. If, for example, today there were no women representatives in this House, there would be only 15 women who were directly elected. If the Senate did not have the women nominees, indeed, it would be a bull dance; only men would be dancing in it. I think the word “nomination” here is an anomally; it is actually a form of election through party lists. Therefore, I would want to say that even as we go forward and look at the economy as whole--- Just the other day, the World Bank gave our economy thumbs up. If The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}