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{
    "id": 429051,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/429051/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 270,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ngong’o",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "was that we give the Kshs238 billion and that we add the counties more funds, but committees arrive at decisions through voting or consensus. I find the Treasury’s explanation in page 221 about how they shared the revenue, wanting. You find the Treasury saying that the revenue allocation between the two levels of Government should be stable and predictable. That is agreeable. They go ahead to say that in the absence of proper costing of functions or a needs-based framework for financing of the two levels of Government, the revenue allocations are based on expected revenue allocations. Ordinarily, they are telling us that they are basing it on historical data. They are basing it on incremental Budget and revenue growth. In my view, I do not see why, as we are going into the second year, the Treasury is still talking of lack of costing of functions. When will these functions be costed? Either someone does not want to cost the functions or someone feels that if the functions are costed, then we will give more money to the counties than we would or vice versa. I do not see why the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council cannot prioritize or even the Senate, which is responsible for protecting the interests of counties, a process that would help us arrive at the actual cost of delivering services to our people. If our constituents are sick, they go to hospitals and the drugs that they are supposed to use there; the needles, syringes and everything else is supposed to have been bought by the county governments. What if the county governments are not able to provide these services? It is going to be a loss to us as a country. I was just concerned. I wanted to speak to the Treasury and I am sure they are watching. When they are giving us figures, either they give us accurate figures or they do not give figures at all. If you go to page 2225, Item (b) where they have talked of national interest, if you add all those figures, they do not add up to Kshs1.139 trillion. Those figures only add up to Kshs452 billion. The question is: Why did they not list all the items of national interest that are financed? Instead of giving us examples, this is a Bill and they need either to give us the details or one line item. I find this a bit careless for the Treasury to give us figures like these. I want to conclude by saying one additional thing; we need, as a country, at this moment, to stop politicking on the issues of devolution and ask ourselves: What are the functions that have actually been devolved? What other additional functions are supposed to be devolved? You hear so many questions being brought to this House about the state of our roads. One of the reasons why the state of our roads in the entire country is in a mess is because we started a year without knowing who was responsible for which class of roads in this country. How careless could we be, as a country, to even not know who is going to maintain the Class D, Class C and Class C roads? The first information we got was that, that money was taken to the counties. Later on, the Treasury had to do an arrangement which is like a token contribution to us, to give us some Fuel Levy Fund, which cannot even maintain 20 kilometres of road. The Kshs15 million is nothing in terms of maintaining rural roads. This is going to hurt the Members of Parliament badly. As I conclude, as a country, we need to be sure which functions have been devolved and which ones are with the national Government."
}