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{
    "id": 643814,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/643814/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 126,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Angwenyi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 326,
        "legal_name": "Jimmy Nuru Ondieki Angwenyi",
        "slug": "jimmy-angwenyi"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me a chance to contribute to this important debate. The National Assembly has allocated a lot of funds to our counties. The requirement by the Constitution is 15 percent of the national Budget but we have more than doubled that to 32 percent as of today. Unfortunately, we cannot see anything coming out of the money that we allocate to the counties. I can talk for my county. We have given them an average of Kshs6 billion a year for the last three years but there is nothing to show for it. If a tenth of that money was given to the CDF you would see development in that county. I know that we all enacted the Constitution and said we wanted to devolve services but I do not think the intention was to devolve everything to the counties and leave the national Government with no function to partake. Recently, governors went to court to try and stop the national Government from constructing and maintaining roads in their counties. That really affected some of us because some of the works on roads being done were blocked. There are many kilometres of roads in our constituencies that are not being done by the national Government, which are supposed to be done by the county governments, but they are not doing it. I had a case on the day the judgement was made, affecting two of my roads. I went to a church in my constituency through one-and-a-half kilometre road that the county government pretended to have constructed and I got stuck there for two hours. They were not able to do a good job on one-and-a-half kilometre road. How can they do a hundred-kilometre road? The other service we have devolved too much is health. Because of the way our county governments have treated health professionals, they are not willing to serve there because they are not happy. You find that a county does not have health professionals. They come from other counties and yet, they are mistreated while providing those essential services to the people of Kenya. The Constitution refers to referral and non-referral hospitals. I wish the National Assembly and the Senate could come up with a Bill that designates all referral hospitals to national hospitals and all primary facilities like dispensaries and health centres to county hospitals. That will give Members of Parliament a job of overseeing the provision of that service to our people. Right now, it has been left to Members of County Assemblies. We provide them with money and ask them to oversee it. Do they care? They know they will get the money anyway because the National Assembly will give them even if they do not perform. 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."
}