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{
    "id": 467679,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/467679/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 166,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Abdirahman",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 161,
        "legal_name": "Abdirahman Ali Hassan",
        "slug": "abdirahman-ali-hassan"
    },
    "content": "Thank you Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir for giving me a chance to contribute on the debate on the County Allocation of Revenue Bill. From the outset, I accept what hon. Kajwang said about the Senators who were there in the beginning. The one from my home also lost. We do not want, as a House, to be rendered jobless. However, we should be realistic enough to make the country move forward. I do not want to spend a lot of time on the Division of Revenue Act because the matter is already in court. We will wait for an advisory opinion and deal with what is before us for now. The benefits of devolution cannot be overemphasized. In the past, as a country, we have seen what fiscal decentralization of the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF) and the CDF have done in our areas. This is worth a good example. That is where we borrowed a leaf from and thought that it would be good to have a devolved system of governance in this country so that we help develop our regions. The truth of the matter is that there are serious disparities in terms of development in our country. However, it is our hope that with such models, depending on how best the resources are used, will help our people. The power plays and wrangles that we are seeing between institutions even at the highest level of legislature will not make a difference in the lives of Kenyans if we spend time thinking on how best we can utilise these resources. We are debating on Kshs210 billion which may not be commensurate – the word commensurate has been pronounced wrongly many times today - with the functions of the county governments. I just want to pick one example where we have a concurrent function between the national Government and the county governments, and this is disaster management. The Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government was allocated Kshs1.7 billion for this. Issues of disaster management and floods are best handled at the county level and not at the national level. We alll know that relying on the national level has been a problem when disaster occurs. I want to make reference to this Bill, in a specific area. This is page 11 which says that there are differences between the National Treasury’s proposal which were guided by a number of factors. I have a bone to pick with two of them. This is the cost of running county governments’ structures and the cost of ongoing devolved functions; this deviated from what the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) had initially proposed. 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."
}