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{
    "id": 676726,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/676726/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 192,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Njuki",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1372,
        "legal_name": "Onesmus Muthomi Njuki",
        "slug": "onesmus-muthomi-njuki"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the Public Appointments (County Assemblies Approval) Bill. This Bill has come a little bit too late because the county governments and county assemblies have been in existence for the last four years. We have done a lot of injustice by letting the counties operate on what they thought were their laid down ground rules. We should have brought legislation that can guide them on how to make a functional government. I do not want to deny that the county governments have created a lot of employment, but it is their ineffectiveness in delivering their services to the people that is really wanting. This is because of the nature of the criteria that was used to recruit those people. I know we have in place the county assembly service boards and the county service boards, but even the formation of those particular bodies was not done well. If you look at the Constitution on how they were formed, apart from the guidelines that were given by the Transition Authority (TA), you will laugh at some of them as just a bad idea. This is because some of them are comprised of the speakers’ and governors’ cronies who assisted them during the elections. Some of them lost during the elections while others have no qualifications. They were simply rewards. This Bill is going to put sanity and provide guidelines for posterity so that we do not tailor-make a body for the purpose of serving the governor or leaders who are in place at that particular time. It should be something that is going to be used by many county governments to come. One chronic disease that is ailing the counties is a bloated payroll. They have a lot of employments that cannot be sustained by the resources that are available, and that is why counties have very little amounts of resources allocated or left for development. The Recurrent Expenditure has been found to be very high in most counties because most of it goes to salaries. At times, we do not understand whether it is by sheer coincidence that governors continue employing while on the other hand some of their employees go for months without salaries. I do not see any logic in seeing advertisements in newspapers today for jobs, one year to elections, having been in existence for four years. In a county that is not paying salaries, you find a long list of new employees. Qualifications that are put in those advertisements leave some of us amazed. We have a reason to believe that some of them are tailor-made to fix some specific people who are to be absorbed into those counties. Late last week in Tharaka Nithi County, there is a constituency that has not paid salaries for Early Childhood Development (ECD) teachers for the last six months and yet, we have a long list of advertisement for jobs coming up in the next few months! There was an interesting job of village administrators who are equivalent to chiefs. The qualification was supposed to be secondary education or equivalent to the same without giving a specific grade. Saying secondary qualification would mean that anybody who stepped into a class in secondary school is qualified to apply for that job. If the grade is not given, maybe as “C” Plus, “D” Plus or “D” Minus, then it means that it is not relevant. In this case, as long as you 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."
}