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{
    "id": 719813,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/719813/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 117,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Nuh",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2840,
        "legal_name": "Junet Sheikh Nuh",
        "slug": "junet-sheikh-nuh"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to contribute to this Bill. This is a very important Bill for this nation. I remember the first year when we arrived here, this is one of the Bills that were so contentious and we debated whether the Senate has a role in it or whether it is the domain of the National Assembly to discuss it. The Senate took it to the Supreme Court to seek an opinion and the opinion said that they have a role to also look at it. This is the Bill that divides the sharable revenue between the counties and the national Government. If I look at the pace at which these monies are devolved to the counties every financial year, I can say that it is the pace of a tortoise. In the last financial year, it was Kshs280.3 billion and this year it has moved to Kshs291 billion other than the conditional grants. That means it is just an increment of Kshs10 billion. I remember there was a time when the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) was increased by Kshs5 billion. The soul of this new Constitution that this country is running on this time is devolution. This country tried for 50 years the central way of doing things in terms of achieving development in all parts of the country, but no development reached many parts of this country. That is why the framers and the architects of this Constitution came up with the idea of devolution so that people can feel and can achieve development in any part of the country. Devolution will not achieve its intended purpose if serious money is not devolved. I know there are issues of corruption and bad governance. That should be addressed separately. We should not use that as a parameter to judge how devolution has performed in our country for the last three years. Every government, whether it is national or county, has its own challenges. The national Government has challenges of corruption as much as the county governments have. For this country to achieve what it calls Vision 2030, I believe devolution can be one of the systems that it can use to achieve that faster. A lot of money that has been devolved is majorly conditional grants. An example is the Kshs38 billion for the lease of health equipment. Personally, I believe that was the huge burden on the counties. The counties have the capacity to lease this equipment by themselves. I believe this deal happened under very highly inflated rates to the disadvantage of counties. Now this is a huge burden and debt for the counties to pay. The 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."
}