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"content": "– I think this is a good provision – but, again, county governments cannot borrow without guarantees and conditions which are put in place by the National Government. So, the situation as we look at it today, which is the main focus of this Motion, is that if you look at the way the local authorities operated before the promulgation of this Constitution, they were really part of the central Government. I know there were the local councils and so on, but really, the operation of local authorities through the office of the chief officers, who were the clerks; it was basically local government as seen from the various county councils and other entities which constituted the local authorities. It was an appendage of the central Government at the time. For that matter, their conduct, whether in borrowing or incurring debts, buying or acquiring property, depended on the decisions which were made by the central Government at that time. So, you will find that in a lot of cases, many loans and burdens that visited some of these local authorities were through the direction or the guidance of the central Government at that time; and if not directly, but indirectly through chief officers like the clerks and so on. Recently, there was a study done, but before I come to that, there was some kind of report on the state of the county councils as existing at that time. This report indicated that only 44 counties out of the 174 that existed were able to pay wage bills – leave anything else – but out of 175, only 44 were in a position to pay their wage bills. Some of them did not even know the number of employees they had. I think we are aware that many of these local authorities, at some point, in order to deal with ghost workers, had to make some interventions. But a report which was done last year on local authorities through the guidance of the Tenth Parliament determined as follows: That over 100 local authorities across the country owed Kshs11.2 billion to the State, co-operative societies and salary arrears as at 30th June, 2010. This is more than three years ago, so the figures are much higher now. In fact, this report is, indeed, an understatement. According to this report, Nairobi as a county owed over Kshs8 billion; but in reality, you would find that Nairobi owes in debt more than Kshs30 billion. The Municipal Council of Mombasa owes more than Kshs2.8 billion; Kisumu Municipal Council owes Kshs1.3 billion. So, if you take an example like Kisumu County, which is just one municipal council – and there are many municipal councils – owing Kshs1.3 billion, surely, with the provisions that they have been given under the current allocations, they are not going to be able to meet the constitutional mandate, functions and authority as spelt out clearly and as I have read them out and in other consequential legislations, like the County Elections Act. So, I would seek the support of the Senate to support this Motion in the sense that we are telling the national Government that, at least, for these debts that were incurred before these county governments were in existence, it would be prudent for the national Government to take them over, manage and service some of these debts, if not all of them, and the county governments then would be left to implement the key objectives of these county governments, particularly in providing services. You would notice that from the allocations that can be derived from what we have already seen from the estimates – and I do not want to anticipate debate – it would look like the money that has been allocated to these county governments, nearly 80 to 90 per 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."
}