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{
    "id": 639416,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/639416/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 286,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ogolla",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1264,
        "legal_name": "Gideon Ochanda Ogolla",
        "slug": "gideon-ochanda-ogolla"
    },
    "content": "The levels of public debt are going to be very high. In terms of projection, we are talking about over Kshs0.7 billion and this is not right when we have many other options. The other thing I want to bring to the attention of the House as we look at this is the whole issue of transfer of functions. In the Constitution, transferring of functions was supposed to have ended by August in the Third year, which was last year. At the moment, we need to be talking about functions that are completely transferred. We do not want to be talking about functions that are still elsewhere. For example, look at the function like water. Water is a function of devolved county governments, but it is still being run by certain boards and authorities. When we talk about costing of functions of water services in the country, some of the functions are still with water authorities and boards and a bit with county governments. What is happening that we cannot put all these things together, cost them and see exactly the cost of providing water in each county? This is something that has not been done. Look at the monies that we are still placing with regional authorities. Some of the functions they are doing are like growing fruits. Livestock and agriculture is transferred to the county governments. What are these other authorities still doing with functions that are devolved? This is exactly why when we talk about costing of real functions, there is still a problem. Added to that is the whole issue of staffing. There are staff who are still projected here as staff that were devolved. It is not said that they are staff who belong to county governments. They are not in the Civil Service of county government. This means that we have devolved functions and attempted to cost functions and we are still costing staff outside those functions. There is something that is not very right here. To an extent that county governments have also recruited, we have three parallel civil services in the county governments. There is the staff that they have recruited, the public servants who were transferred or devolved and then there are certain staff that were with regional authorities or departments. We are talking about Recurrent Expenditure that is so huge and yet we are not making any attempt to bring it down. In this projection, there is a bit of money that is for the staff we are calling “devolved staff”. In my view, the costing needs to be revised although we are really late in doing the costing for purposes of what we are calling county government functions. I want to bring out a number of issues that are outstanding. We are talking about arrangements of measuring the physical capacity and efficiency of county governments. What kind of instruments do we have to do this? This is still not there and yet it is a factor that needs to be looked at when we are allocating, giving revenue or resources to county governments. If you look at Article 203(1)(i) of the Constitution, and I want to bring this in a different perspective, it states:- “the need for economic optimisation of each county and to provide incentives for each county to optimise its capacity to raise revenue.” 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."
}