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"speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Mbarire",
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"legal_name": "Cecily Mutitu Mbarire",
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"content": "Thank you, hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this Motion. I want to begin from the outset by congratulating the President who has only been in office for one year and yet, he has been able to do quite a lot. While people’s expectations may have been much higher, we all agree that some work has truly been done. I want to begin by really looking at devolution and the fact that many people did not think that devolution was going to work. Many people even accused the Jubilee Government of not being committed to devolution but, within one year, we can see that we are not only funding devolution with the required 15 per cent as per the Constitution, but we have even doubled that to 32 per cent. That is the reason why everybody is looking at county governments and how that money is being used. I think it is important that even as this money is being increased, we continue as a Parliament to demand accountability on the part of those responsible for those funds, just like the national Government is accountable to that which they are left with. There is no doubt there has been teething problems with devolution and I think it is important that, even as the Government continues or has devolved most of these responsibilities, we start to ask ourselves whether devolution or roles per se is, in itself, what we need. Do we also want to devolve at a point where we know that the county governments have the capacity to manage those roles or to play those roles? In particular, I want to touch on health. I think part of the reason why the Government moved very first to devolve functions that were according to the Constitution supposed to be devolved within three years was because of the noise that was there, that Jubilee is not committed to devolution. As a result, we have an important sector of health that was devolved to some counties, many of them that were not prepared and did not have the capacity to manage this very important sector that touched on the lives of Kenyans."
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