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"content": "excusable. However, for them to continue up to now, and we are considering the fourth report, it is inexcusable. I hope that under your tenure as Speaker, systems will be put in place to ensure that the weaknesses that had been identified year in, year out in this report are things of the past. This becomes very critical because under our new Constitution, the more I look at the way Kenya is going, the grievances people have, and the political situation, the future of this country depends on devolution. In other words, our county governments must really operate as county governments. They must be able not only to get the equitable share of revenue of the amount collected at the national level. However, by now, we should have begun seeing the increasing volume of the local revenue raised by the county governments. However, what has happened? If you read the various reports; that is the element on which development of the counties will really depend. The development of the counties will depend not just on the revenue they get from the national Government that will push them to a particular level. It will also depend on how they develop their areas and are able to raise local revenue to fund that development. Mr. Speaker, Sir, what is depressing is that if you read all these reports, instead of the percentage of the local revenue increasing, it has been going down. What is even more serious is that in some cases, the local revenue being raised by the county governments is even lower than the local revenue that used to be raised by the previous local governments. Yes, there are a few improvements, but in a number of them, the revenues have gone down. Even in my own county, it has gone down from Kshs3.34 million in the year 2015 to 2016 to Kshs2.56 million in the current year under discussion. This is a reduction of 23.2 per cent; and why should that be the case? It should be going up by 25 per cent all the time rather than going down. When it goes down, it shows that either development is not taking place in that county, or that the amount being collected is not being properly accounted for. So, the systems that have been recommended by the Auditor-General in this report on issues of accountability of money raised locally should be looked into and all the amounts raised locally should be properly accounted for in addition to what must be done to increase that amount. On the issue of emoluments, I intend to criticize the national Government a bit. This is because, ideally, what should have happened is that the county governments employ their staff; other staffs are seconded to the county by the national Government while other staffs were inherited from the local authorities which previously existed at that time. However, the Transition Authority (TA) ought to have audited the real personnel requirements of the county governments to make them operate efficiently, which they never did. Secondly, they did not audit the employees, most of whom were inherited from the local authorities and who had grown up with bad habits of employment. Therefore, the county government and Governors in, particular, found it very difficult for them to terminate those employees for political reasons. If you sack so many employees within the county, would you be elected again? There would be a lot of hue and cry that you are now raising unemployment within the county. So, those were the difficulties experienced, and so on. But those are some of the things that must be The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}