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{
    "id": 566000,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/566000/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 299,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. A.B. Duale",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 15,
        "legal_name": "Aden Bare Duale",
        "slug": "aden-duale"
    },
    "content": "Level 5 Hospital, in terms of cleanliness and equipment, it is a hospital that you can now say is better than Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). If 94 hospitals in the 47 counties can be transformed to what I saw in Machakos County, then Kenya will transform in terms of the healthcare. With regard to the Equalisation Fund for the 14 counties, as much as the money is in a safety basket, the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury should now, through the Budget and Appropriations Committee Chairperson, operationalise the money and the regions must receive their share. There is over Kshs10 billion now in the kitty. My problem is that as this House oversees the national Government, the county governments must be overseen by the Senate. Each and every penny of the Kshs287 billion must benefit the people of Kenya. A lot of us have become victims of governors. Personally, I do not want to vie to become a governor. However, if you walk round the country, and I want to say it from the bottom of my heart, or if you visit the 47 counties, you will find that the governors and the county executives are our people. They are our friends and relatives and they are Kenyans. If you visit these 47 counties, starting with Nairobi County where this Parliament is established, you will not see evidence of the billions we are allocating to county governments at work. I want our brothers, the governors, not to see us as politicians but as friends. That all of us together, the National Assembly, the Senate, governors and the national Government, work towards making sure that we change the lives of our people and more of our people leave the poverty bracket. Where is the problem? The problem is in many institutions. The problem is in the Auditor-General’s Office. We have allocated a lot of money. We want the Auditor-General to make sure that each and every penny is accounted for. The other problem is in the Office of the Controller of Budget. The Controller of Budget must make sure that the Budget and Appropriation Bill presented to that Office must be one that has been passed by the assemblies and not one that is coming from the governors. We want our brothers and sisters who work for the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to do their job. We made those four offices to be independent, namely, the offices of the DPP, the EACC, the Auditor-General and the Controller of Budget. I had the benefit of serving in the last Parliament. We made those four offices independent and only answerable to the National Assembly so that they can fight the war against corruption. Today, people are blaming the President and yet his hands are tied. The best he can do is to sack a member of his Cabinet or the national Executive. For that, he must get enough evidence as presented by the EACC. We are making it very clear from the outset that the onus on how to fight corruption lies with those independent bodies. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to ask my colleagues - especially the chairpersons of the committees that oversee those bodies - to ensure that all the money that we, as the National Assembly, allocate to those institutions, positively impact the lives of Kenyans. The Kshs287 billion that will go to the 47 counties is not little money; it is not a drop in the ocean. It is money that can transform the lives of our people by between 20 to 30 per cent. We want to indulge our governors that we need to put our politics aside in the remaining two-and- half years and focus on positive change and transformation of the lives of our rural and urban populations. We cannot implement a Kshs2 trillion Budget and have no development in the country. We must see to it that the money that we allocate to the national Government, the The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}