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{
    "id": 655523,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/655523/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 519,
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    "content": "this and where necessary, find ways of compelling governors in the counties that are laggards to put this equipment to useful use. My aspiration for Homa Bay County has always been that we can have a county hospital where the Senator or governor can be admitted if they fell sick. I hope the additional Kshs500 million will help us to get close to that. The CRA had proposed that primary and secondary schools infrastructure development be handed over to counties in the form of a conditional grant. I support this position because in as much as primary and secondary education is a responsibility of the national Government, Article 187 of the Constitution provides mechanisms for inter-governmental arrangements and for the national Government to cede some of its functions to the county government. As a Senator, I am invited to fundraisers for primary and secondary schools almost every weekend, yet this money has already been disbursed to the counties at the level of the constituencies. We must have some candid discussion in the nation and make sure that the money that has been set aside for national Government functions at the constituency level, which we previously called Constituencies Development Fund (CDF), is given to counties as a conditional grant, so that they continue to do those roles that are supposed to be done by the national Government. The county should become the implementation agency rather than taking it to the constituency. The constituency is not a level of government. We have only two levels; the national Government and county level. How I wish this House would have made a recommendation when we were discussing the Division of Revenue Bill and not the County Allocation of Revenue Bill. We could have had some debate on whether we should take the billions that have been set aside for national Government development at the constituencies and give it to the counties. This is because the job of the Members of the National Assembly is to legislate; there is no difference between them and us. Members of the National Assembly are not supposed to be sitting on Kshs100 million which they dispense with abandon. I wish that we could have addressed the issues of revenue collection because as much as we are sending Kshs301 billion to the counties, we do not have a good picture of how much money they are collecting through their own initiatives. My own county is expected to collect Kshs200 million in terms of local revenue. However, if you do a simplistic calculation, you get a feeling that the county can do more. In future, we must have a parameter that places some premium on the revenue collection efforts of the counties. As Senate, we have come up with many suggestions that counties should automate their revenue collection efforts. However, automation of inferior processes will only lead to inferior results. We must have a situation where there is fidelity and absence of corruption in these counties because you sometimes find that the money that is collected from cattle markets over the weekend is not banked in the relevant accounts. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, on the issue of roads and infrastructure, I have seen a conditional grant that has been given to the counties. However, we must ask ourselves why the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure continues to get a huge budgetary allocation yet we know that there are certain classes of roads that should be handed over to counties. If you look at the number of kilometres handed over to the counties and the number that has been retained by the national Government, the counties have been handed a larger unit of roads under their The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}