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"content": "marginalized groups were not considered and they are not part and parcel of the assemblies. Mr. Speaker, Sir, our deliberations in the committee were around the constitution of the County Public Service Boards (CPSB). As per the law, the County Assembly Board should include the Speaker, the Majority and Minority leaders and one of the county assembly Members elected by Members of the CPSB. We note that they constituted all these entities without a single woman. In some counties, you find no single lady, person with disability or youth sitting in the CPSB. This is the entity that is expected to hire all the staff that are going to run the county assemblies for many years to come. This is because once they have been hired and most of them are in their 20s, they will be there for the next 20 or 30 years. I think a grave injustice was occasioned on the people of Kenya by county assemblies operating without the representation of the diverse persons in the counties. I congratulate Sen. Wangari for coming up with this Bill. This Bill will make it clear that county assemblies will not form committees, swear in speakers, deputy speakers, majority or minority leaders without the representation of the marginalized groups. Mr. Speaker, Sir, there is a fundamental question that we need to ask ourselves as a country. How does it occur that in a whole county all MCAs, about 40 or 45 of them, no woman is elected? That is a fundamental question. At the end of the day, the question we are asking ourselves is: Why should a county assembly elect 30 men and then nominate 15 women? Why can they not promote an election of, for example, of 10 women so as to ensure that instead of the 15 women extra nominations, the money that is coming from there can go to fund education, roads and any other social services? There is greater value in promoting civic education and leadership that recognizes persons with disability, election of youth and women. This is so that we can do away with the possibility of nominating over 600 people. Can you imagine, with the minimum earnings that a county assembly gets, that you have nominated 600 people each earning at least Kshs200,000. That is millions of shillings in one month. So, in a year you have wasted a lot of money that would have gone to social services. So, there is value in ensuring that we promote election of the other gender, which in this case is represented by women. Mr. Speaker, Sir, this problem is prevalent in the counties that are marginalized. This is a double marginalization because the money that has been given to those counties will be voted to the CPSB to pay people who, otherwise, should have been elected. To address this issue, Senators, the CIC and the Gender and Human Rights Commission (GHRC) should be able to carry out civic education. This will ensure that information gets to the people so that they understand the value of electing instead of nominating. That is the issue that we must address. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the other issue is on representation in the counties. Despite the fact that these people were nominated and they came in late, because of the wrong footing that our county assemblies started on, they are not being recognized. In fact, the Chairperson of the Gender and Human Rights Commission just told our Committee, and Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o was there today, that all these nominated people are referred to as bonga points. This is a translation of “extra points.” In other words, they are being treated like they just came later to fill the gap. People must appreciate that"
}