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"content": "becomes very critical. Listening to the Chairman of that CRA, I think that there is a lot of hope. I would urge that the CRA joins the Senate in being one of the defenders of the interests of devolution and giving devolved units sufficient funds. The Committee on Finance, Commerce and Economic Affairs has engaged several of these Commissions. It has come out quite clearly that, indeed, the proposed allocations need to be amended upwards. I am happy that the Chair of the Committee has already sounded notice that he will be moving an amendment that will be absolutely helpful; for the reason that the devolved units that we are trying to share revenues between the national Government and themselves, are in very early stages of infancy. The Constitution has offloaded quite heavy responsibilities to these units. I am happy that the Cheserem Commission did not limit themselves to the constitutional threshold at the lower level, but have gone much higher; almost doubling the threshold. However, we still think that, that is not enough. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as we share out these revenues, one of the issues that I agree with the Chairman of the Committee on, is the need to very quickly build the capacities of the devolved units, so that they are able to discharge their responsibilities to the public fully. Mr. Speaker, Sir, you will find that officers have been offloaded from the national government to the county governments. In many ways, the national government will not offload the very best they have. So, there is a risk of offloading persons who should actually be having an exit, to go and lord it over the county governments. It has been stated to the Committee, and I hope that as a House charged with oversight, we will continue reminding the county governments that those officers seconded to them are purely transitional. They reserve the right to competitively recruit staff of their own to be able to execute their mandate. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I do not understand why conditional allocations to counties should be counted as county revenue because that money remains the money of the national government. It is given to the counties on conditions. If they cannot meet their needs, then they do not use the money. So, the funds being given to the county governments should exclude that figure that is a conditional allocation. As we go through these primary stages of giving effect to counties, I was a bit disappointed by the casual manner in which a body called the TA is taking its duties. Money was set aside to help counties that do not have infrastructure start up. We were told very moving stories of the sorry state of Nyandarua County whose entire headquarters and county facilities are in Laikipia County. So, they need to have a start up, but the TA curiously decided that the money available, that is, Kshs3.2 billion, should be spent like this; it is not known how the Kshs300 million was spent, but the remaining Kshs2.9 billion was divided equally between counties. The needs of Homa Bay are not the needs of Nairobi. The needs of Mombasa are not the needs of Wajir or Mandera. You cannot just give across board Kshs2.9 billion. If you ask them how it was shared, they will tell you that Governors insisted. There is no provision in law for Governors to insist on anything. It is either being shared within the law or in violation of the law. When we have bodies like that which are not being run to our expectations, then the very revenues that are supposed to help the counties to start up, end up being misapplied, misallocated and eventually we shall have a county with enormous facilities like Nairobi here competing for the pittance that Nyandarua requires to liberate itself from Lakikipia. This 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."
}