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    "id": 536771,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/536771/?format=api",
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    "content": "Equally, allow me to thank the Senate Minority Leader whose responsibility was to do what I am doing but he has allowed me to do it on his behalf. I associate myself with all the statements that have been made by the Chairman of the Committee on Finance, Commerce and Budget; and Senator for Mandera. So that I am not repetitive, I intend to support the Bill by just pointing out to Members the salient issues that we must remain alive to as we pass this Bill. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the first salient point, which the House needs to know, is that the CRA was not in agreement with the National Treasury or the IBEC in the figure that is presented before you. Our lead consultant under the Constitution is the CRA. It is the CRA which, in quotes, “would appear like should bind us,” because, indeed, they are our consultants. Therefore, we should start by expressing our disappointment that the Chairman of the Commission, Commissisoner Cheserem, has allowed himself to use the IBEC as his first port of call. That should not be the case. We encourage him that before he goes to the IBEC, he should pass through us so that he is enriched by our stand that we will agree with him or we will ask for more. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the second point is that the figure of Kshs775,845,000,000 by the CRA is the equitable share which is based on the total sharable revenue. Members should remember that the revenue that we share is based on the last audited accounts approved by the National Assembly. These are the accounts of 2012/2013 Financial Year. We demand that the National Assembly Public Accounts Committee must do its work. We are losing out to the counties because ideally, we should have based our sharing on the audited accounts of the Financial Year 2013/2014. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the revenue being collected is Kshs1.3 trillion and because of the National Assembly not being up to date in approving accounts, we are losing out. The counties would have got far much more. The third point which I would like to talk about is the fact that the Chairman has confirmed to us that we have not agreed with the National Assembly. The figure given by the National Assembly and agreed together with Inter-Government Budget and Economic Council (IBEC) is Kshs253.5 billion. As a Committee, we have disagreed. We are saying that if we adopt this figure, we will paralyze critical functions in the counties. Therefore, we are leading this House in disagreeing with the National Assembly figure. We would like this House to support our amendment, which is that, it should move to Kshs259 billion for the following reasons:- If you do not increase this amount to Kshs259 billion, it means that the conditional allocation that is meant to go to Level 5 hospitals would be Kshs2 billion only. This is completely inadequate. We are therefore saying if you support this amendment, it will move from Kshs2 billion to Kshs3.6 billion. This will go a long way in sorting out the challenges in Level 5 hospitals. The second reasons why we would like the House to agree with us as a Committee that this figure be varied upwards is because of something called establishment of county emergency. We all know that when emergencies take place, they do not do so in the office of the national Treasury or the Office of the President; emergencies occur in the counties. The current practice where an emergency occurres in a county and the governor is reduced to only begging and drawing the attention of the 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."
}