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{
    "id": 701408,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/701408/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 250,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "make sense that counties allocate resources for doing a huge perimeter fence around a market and yet within that market, traders do not have stalls. This is a clear case of misplaced priorities. Sanitation is important. However, to find a county government allocating, for example, Kshs3.5 million to a market not to provide water or electricity but to build some pit latrines. If you were to do a census, you would find seven or eight pit latrines already within the same shopping centres. This is a clear case of misplaced priorities. Counties must have proper priorities. As they also engage in delivery of their 14 mandates, the other element is value for money. One of the aspects that the 47 county governments, without exception, have perfected is the art of corruption. Counties seem to have imagined that one of the functions devolved to them which they are working so hard to fulfill and they are implementing with meticulous precision is corruption. If you go to counties and ask questions, you will be told that devolution in county governments is a new concept. Therefore, county assemblies are still learning. That is good and quite persuasive.Therefore, the public might not ask for very serious delivery on the mandates given to county governments. However, when it comes to corruption, they have perfected the act and they are not on a learning curve. So, how is it possible that on service delivery, you are learning and you expect leniency but when it comes to perfecting the art of corruption, you are doing exceptionally well? It would have made sense to tell us that you are still learning in terms of how to deliver services expected from county governments but we should also see amateur corruption activities within counties. These are issues that counties must appreciate because if you looked keenly at the choice of the functions given to counties, those are the functions whose impact is felt by the ordinary citizens in the village. This is because devolution was about resources; taking resources and power to make decisions closer to wananchi and giving counties an opportunity to make the right priorities for themselves. What we are seeing instead is perfection of corruption, tribalism and nepotism. How possible is it that a public service board that is supposed to be independent of the executive at the county assembly would allow a governor to employ his cousin, nephew, girlfriend and the so-called county first lady to run a whole programme in a county without accountability? You also find County Executive Committee (CEC) members, chief officers and directors have their concubines and girlfriends and even boyfriends working in the county governments. This kind of nepotism and ways of addressing issues in counties ---"
}