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{
    "id": 719808,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/719808/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 112,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Kanyua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 981,
        "legal_name": "Priscilla Nyokabi Kanyua",
        "slug": "priscilla-nyokabi-kanyua"
    },
    "content": "county governments to do murram roads. They can do thousands of kilometres with the amount of money that has been allocated to them. The national Government can take up tarmac roads and we should insist that the tarmac roads should then have a unit cost per kilometre. We continue to spend a lot of unnecessary money on some of the constructions that we have. In our neighbouring countries, the unit cost of building a kilometre of tarmac road is much lower than what we are paying here in Kenya. Having governors do tarmac roads is not helping. The funds that they have are barely sufficient for the services that they need to give. We also need to look at the question of the doctors’ strike. I was hoping that having received the Petition here in the National Assembly - and I will propose this matter in the Budget and Appropriations Committee - it was time that the Budget adopted a creative solution. Nothing stops the Ministry and the National Treasury from retaining the funds that should be paid to doctors at the national level. Nothing in law also stops the National Treasury from making conditional allocation on funds that should be paid to doctors. If we apply our mind to creative solutions on the doctors’ strike, it is possible for this House and the National Treasury to provide a solution to the doctors’ strike for as long as the doctors are not asking for backdated salaries. If doctors are going to ask for salaries going forward, there is before this House a Supplementary Budget, and there is this Division of Revenue Bill for the next financial year. Nothing stops the National Treasury from making conditional allocations for monies that should be paid to doctors by different counties. Time has come for us to consider whether it was wise to devolve health in the first instance. We now have a very unhealthy country. We were unhealthy before but we are now twice unhealthy as we were before devolution. Our health standards were at some level before devolution. After devolution, our health standards are on the floor. We must, as a country, also take decisions. One of the decisions we need to take as the National Assembly is to revert the function of health back to the national Government. It will have problems even there but the problems are going to be much less than what we now have. Now we have 47 health problems. We have 47 unhealthy counties. We have 47 times the problems of what we had before in the health care system. We need to generate a Bill that allows us to consider whether it was wise in the first place to devolve health and if it was not wise to devolve health, return the entire health function back to the national Government. We can split by allowing county governments to have some of the health functions like the dispensaries and revert the Level 4 hospitals and Level 5 hospitals to the national Government and most importantly, put back the entire personnel in the heath sector to the national Government. It happened with the teachers. We never devolved education and so it should happen with health as well. The joke in law has been that when we were writing the Constitution, the doctors were busy in the hospitals and so they did not take part in the constitutional review exercise. The teachers on the other hand, with a very strong Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) were active in the constitutional review exercise that is why matters education are better addressed by the Constitution than matters health. But having passed a very progressive Constitution, other considerations can be done. A National Assembly like ours can sit and review the matters under concern. A budget process like this one allows the National Treasury to come before us with creative solutions on solving the doctors’ strike, for example, by retaining the money that should be paid to doctors at the national level and proceeding to pay the doctors so that the strike that we have can be ended at the earliest possible time. 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."
}