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{
    "id": 768643,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/768643/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 128,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cherargei",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13217,
        "legal_name": "Cherarkey K Samson",
        "slug": "cherarkey-k-samson"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker. The annual reports of the county governments have come against the backdrop of the issues that have been raised. Devolution was meant to bring a lot of development and changes at the county level, especially from the level of wards up to the county level. It is very sad that as we look at this Report, there are so many issues that have been raised in the last five years. Some counties have done somehow well, but others are still lagging behind in terms of ensuring that there is proper development. It is shocking that we are having high amount of pending bills of around Ksh35.8 billion. This shows that our counties need to be diligent. We need to look at the Public Finance Management Act again so that our counties do not spend what they do not have. Some of the projects that we have in our counties do not make sense. In Nandi County, you will find that they have constructed isolated markets in every trading centre yet those markets are not being used. You find that they are overgrown. This means that most of the counties have not gotten their priorities right. The Controller of Budget has captured that very well. I wish our counties can come out strongly and prioritize their key areas for our people to get value. It does not make sense to construct some of these projects that our people cannot use or see the value of. We can allow them some leeway because there was never a governor before; neither had one run a county government. However, I do hope and believe that we need to relook at the priorities that our counties are having. The other aspect is duplication of projects in most counties. We have a lot of tussle between the roles of Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA), Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), the feeder roads that are being run by the county governments and the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) roads. We need to resolve some of these issues for accountability to be brought up quite high. This is because you find that some roads are constructed by the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) and others are constructed by KeRRA or the county government. I think that it is high time that we harmonize and rationalize some of these functions. Going forward, we should look for a way of avoiding this duplication of projects. When we have duplication of projects, there cannot be proper accountability. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}