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    "id": 596820,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/596820/?format=api",
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    "content": "do them. They did not realise that implementing the health sector was so massive that it could not just be left in their hands. The other problem that we had, and this is fairly manifest, is that the national Government was supposed to facilitate and build the capacities of the county governments. Nobody did this. The national Government, first of all, was not fairly well defined in the Constitution to the extent that we would have made a very clear reference that when we are talking about health issues, there was a national Department of Health in the country. That would have made more sense. Then the Department would be behoved at that particular time to be doing certain things direct. This was going to be exactly in their portfolio. But when it was left to the national Government, there was the problem of the Council of Governors pleading with the President and the President transferring globally all the functions to them and yet, they could not perform them at that particular time. Now we are in a situation where the health sector is crumbling. Definitely, health practitioners like Hon. Eseli and Hon. Nyikal must come out with a way to sort out this issue. The problem is that they are trying to sort it out, but ignoring certain aspects of the Constitution. If one combined the provisions of the Constitution, all the way from Articles 186, 187, 189, 190 and 191, and looked at them together, definitely, there are answers there in terms of failures of county governments when they are unable to do certain things. When they are unable to perform certain functions, there are reversal arrangements that are supposed to be in place. There are elements of co-operation constitutionally. But the only problem is: Who is supposed to initiate this? Is it when a county government fails that it becomes the responsibility of the national Government to look out for a specific county government to start negotiating or co-operating with it? These are now the operational and fundamental failures that we have here. In the end, we have a situation where there are failures in individual county governments. In my view, that would have been the spirit of the Constitution - that when individual county governments realised that there are certain functions that were conferred on them and they were unable to perform them, they were supposed to re-engage the national Government on individual basis. This is exactly where the problem is. They are trying to engage the national Government in a union style where all of them are thinking that they are at one level and are able to operate in the same way. This is where the CoG is not looking at things right. Individual county governments, upon seeing a failure and seeing that their capacities cannot absorb what is supposed to be done, need to re-engaged the national Government and particularly the Department of Health to see that those functions are done with the support of the national Government. It is allowed even now. Up to now, any county government, be it my Siaya County, is allowed to come up as an individual county government to engage with the Department of Health to indicate that they are still unable to operate Level 5 or Level 4 and can only operate up to Level 2 or Level 3. Then the rest, upon negotiation, they can agree with the national Government that, that happens. The problem comes in that we are now trying to solve this issue of inability through this kind of a Bill. I want to bring in this caution – and the caveat is in front of us - that there are going to be a lot of problems, especially with the Constitution. The other thing that I want to bring out is the whole issue of what happens to the other sectors. Many other sectors in our Government are facing more or less similar situations. Today alone, in our Committee, we were handling the issue of a Motion that we had passed. It was 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."
}