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{
    "id": 497888,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/497888/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 284,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "It appears to be a simple amendment, but this amendment will protect county governments against what I call rogue debtors who will proceed quietly to pull the rug under the feet of Governors so that they can then attach property to satisfy debts which have not gone through the legal process. Once we put this protection, they will follow the process that everybody follows when you want to attach or file a suit against the Government. You issue a mandatory notice and then you get a judgement which must go through a process. Before you can execute – in fact, you cannot execute against the Government – you then get paid but you are not allowed to paralyze the work of the Government simply because you have a debt or you have been granted a judgement in your favour. I want to suggest that it was, in my own view, an oversight. You were one of the people and the architects of this law and we must come to that understanding that, in fact, we did not intend to expose our counties because if we had given the protection to our former municipal councils, former town councils and other councils, we should give an equal protection of law to our county governments so that like the County Government of Webuye, let us not end up having orders like we have here where the judge said in Paragraph 17: “Bungoma County do give vacant possession of LR.No.Ndivisi/Muchi1265 in Webuye Township to the plaintiff on a date to be agreed upon”. There was no order of stay; it was straightforward: “That Bungoma County do pay the applicant Kshs100,000 being damages together with interest with effect from 1st July, 1991 until payment in full”. Hon. Senators, in 1991, we never contemplated the County Government of Bungoma, but the County Government of Bungoma is going to pay from 1991 to a person who they did not know; to a person who they did not contract; to a person who rendered services to a defunct municipal council, but they did not take responsibility, because in contemplating the county governments, we did not offer them the protection that they are supposed to have like any other government. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I dare suggest that we must offer our counties – they are not municipal councils – protection that is also given to the national Government. In fact, not to have this law protecting county government is, in my own view, discrimination because we all say we have one national Government and 47 county governments. One national Government enjoys protection of law in terms of execution and civil proceedings and 47 others do not enjoy the same. Before the committees that have set up this Senate get to the bottom of the audit reports of the previous municipal councils--- I can tell you when you read those reports, you will shed tears as to the mismanagement of resources, waste et cetera, and these debts are going to be loaded on our county governments if we do not, in fact, contemplate this legislation. The Government Proceedings Act as it is now is one of those laws we should have done away with a long time ago. 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."
}