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{
    "id": 728152,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/728152/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 350,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mulu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1955,
        "legal_name": "Benson Makali Mulu",
        "slug": "benson-makali-mulu"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Let me use this time to second this important Bill, the Equalisation Fund Appropriation Bill. This is a very important Bill because this Fund was created by the Constitution since 2010, as the Chair has said. In the contributions that I have made to this House relating to budgets, I have always said that it is unfortunate that these funds have not been utilised. Today, I am a happy person. Even though it has come late as we are just winding up the 11th Parliament, I am happy we now have a framework of how the money can be used. Looking at the Equalisation Fund, I like the proposal where we are saying that we need to review the so-called marginalisation policy. Therefore, in terms of targeting, we should target the right places. Currently, the targeting is at county level. That is why you realise that everybody who has read through these 14 counties always ends up asking the question: How comes Ukambani counties like Machakos, Makueni, Kitui and even Kajiado are missing from this important list? That is why, as we move forward towards reviewing this important policy on marginalisation, we must appreciate and accept, as Kenyans, that there is no county in this country which does not have pockets of marginalised areas. Every county you move to, there is one or two areas which you can say are really marginalised. The sole purpose of this Fund is to make sure that areas which had been left behind in terms of development can catch up with other areas. It is important that the policy is done in such a way that we can target the whole country other than looking at the county level, but target areas which we think are marginalised. That way, we will bring balanced development to all our areas. We need to note that the years we have lost without implementing the Fund is what I will call delayed implementation. If this framework was in place immediately after 2010, we would have already done about five years of implementation. As I speak, we have lost about five years of implementation which means that the same areas have remained marginalised because nothing has changed in terms of additional funding. Therefore, as we move forward, it is important for the secretariat which has been created to oversee the implementation of this Fund to take this work very seriously. We can see a situation where implementation is done the same way we do with the NG-CDF, so that every year, resources allocated to the Equalisation Fund are utilised the same year and we do not have any delays. In that case, we will help areas which are quite 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."
}