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{
    "id": 719846,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/719846/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 150,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Oyoo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2408,
        "legal_name": "James Onyango Oyoo",
        "slug": "james-onyango-oyoo"
    },
    "content": "polytechnics, many of them in very dilapidated or near non-existent state, and many other projects. This is not the first time we are talking about the Division of Revenue Bill in this House. We have spoken to this thing for a very long time. Today I want to talk about the challenges that this Bill is facing. The biggest challenge that this Bill is facing is, like my colleagues have articulated on the Floor of this House, corruption. The other one is negligence or lacklustre attitude of Government bureaucrats. These monies will be appropriated here and it will take the implementing authorities, the National Treasury, their pace and days to do remittances. In most cases, they misallocate. The monies that are meant for health are taken elsewhere to pay debts where they will get compensation. Sometimes some go to pay what has brought Kenya to its economic knees, the so-called debts, more so international debts. It is so intoxicating that this House, if we mean business, needs to come up with legislation that will force the national Government be subjected to public participation. In future and anybody in Government who wants to incur international debt must be subjected to public participation and the debt must be tabled in this House. The public, through their representatives who are Members of Parliament, should be able to debate and authorise debts. The biggest channel of corruption is the so-called international debts. Government officers envisage any programme, roll it out, they get a Chinese bank that is ready to finance it, and they do it on their own. If you look at the evolution of all the public projects being undertaken through this mechanism, they are an eyesore. The expenditures cannot match the projects that are on the ground. We have a lot of priorities misallocated because of this. We have roads that need to be done, but they cannot be done because monies are taken elsewhere – to things that are not priorities. But because senior people in the Government want to make cuts out of them, those are the projects which are given priority. We have the intention of sprucing up village polytechnics with a view to providing our children who are not able to make it to universities with ample opportunity to further their ambitions. But this cannot be done. This important notion is taken to the county governments and nothing happens. I do not know whether it is because they are in receptive stage or because most of the governors are former civil servants who grew up knowing that a public servant is supposed to earn very little, but get more money through corruption. If you know how to control the authorities then you can get away with corruption. Therefore, you find that very little is happening in the county governments, more so in areas like village polytechnics where we wanted to give our boys and girls – who do not have the opportunity to go to universities – another opportunity to further their ambitions. We have lack of structures in the governments so that the county governments inherited departments which do not have staff. When they have staff and because the county governments are very local, the ones that are well trained run their things locally. Some people have run away, and the county governments do not have enough money to train and maintain their staff. We have a constrained government structure that cannot sustain the envisaged use of these funds. We have constant misappropriation of funds everywhere. While we were always complaining that the national Government was full of corruption, I think corruption appears to have been devolved. It is occurring to the public that maybe this county government concept came without the Government preparing the mechanism. It is as if corruption was fully devolved to the counties. And there is no mechanism for arresting it. You find county and EACC officers, who are well known to the county governors and senior county officers, drinking together every evening. Misappropriations are done and they can see. There is nothing they can do because they 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."
}