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{
    "id": 468113,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/468113/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 313,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, without necessarily repeating what my colleagues have said, I would, at the foremost, want to support and agree with a lot of the Senators who have made their sentiments here. These sentiments are that the funds which have been devolved to the counties are inadequate. This fact is uniform throughout the country. But, Madam Temporary Speaker, I want to look at this issue from a slightly different position and understanding; that, the capacities that we have had or the functions that we want to assume, that running a devolved government for the first time is ever going to be easy--- It is very difficult and if we want to understand how far we have come with the abilities that we have, we should, perhaps commend the governors for what they have done almost single handedly with Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) who sometimes do not even speak the language, let alone understand financial matters. I think the governors of this country – especially some governors that I particularly know – have tried the best they can with the support of the Transition Authority (TA) – which itself was not also capable of doing budgets efficiently- and come up with budgets. This is something we can learn from and we can move on from there, irrespective of some of the challenges that are there. So, I want to commend some of the governors who have done a splendid job and they have avoided some of those unnecessary expenses like entertainment, building mansions for themselves and all those other things. In particular, I am talking about the Governor for my county, Bomet. I had the opportunity to look at his budget and I think it is one of those budgets that could make do with the little money that we got, which is slightly under Kshs4 billion. This amount is inadequate. Madam Temporary Speaker, I just want to refer to a few of the issues that may have been raised, but I just want to add a slightly new dimension on it. It is by law that the functions that are going to be done by counties will be requested by the counties. These functions fit a certain criteria; they will be gazetted and effected. I do not think there is any county here which is going to apply to the central Government, asking to be given the opportunity to pay salaries. I do not think there is any county which will want to do that. It is a requirement by law that these functions should be requested for and gazetted. So, I do not really think that some of the things that we could be talking about may apply directly until the law is applied as it is. So, I do not think counties would want to ask for that. Devolution requires that a function be transferred along with its funds. So, I should expect that for every single civil servant who is moved from the central Government and devolved to the counties, he must be devolved with his salary. Therefore, we should not have a reason to spend money allocated to counties on salaries. So, I think on some of these things, we can try and argue. Madam Temporary Speaker, some of the things that are really going to give us a difficult time at the counties are the issues of outstanding debts. The budgets that we have here are three years old; from the 2010/2011 financial year. The auctioneers are not going to wait to have the accounts audited; they will be pestering the counties immediately. That is why I think these budgets should have been done based on what we know of the current revenues that the country is generating in order to safeguard and salvage some of the counties which will sink – irrespective of how much money we give them – in the debts that they have. So, these are areas that I think the unconditional grants would have 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."
}