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    "id": 775018,
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    "content": "because none of them has less than 50,000. The Committee should lead us to re-think these things. Initially, it was proposed that a population of 500,000 people would be a city and 250,000 will be a municipality. In fact, the Bill says that every county headquarters must be given municipal status. What is the incentive? If, for example,the headquarters of a county like Elgeyo-Marakwet is established in a place like Tot, or the headquarters of Tharaka-Nithi is moved to Kathangachini or Marimanti which are small centres, if that was to be the case, let the town grow. Let us call the county headquarters ‘the county headquarters’. Let the status of a town be scientific in terms of the population and the challenges of a municipality that is required to be. I believe that these things may need some re-looking at, but not in entirely the manner in which the Bill is proposing. I agreed to move this Bill because we have a duty to facilitate institutions of governance which are provided for by the Constitution and the Act of Parliament which are assisting the Summit and the Council of Governors (CoG) who worked on this Bill. Again, like I spoke earlier in regards to the other Bill, I will be more than happy to see if the Committee can have serious conversations with the Committee of CoG that deals with matters of urban areas and cities to see what areas we might need to re-look at. We should forget the burden of creating too many bodies that are creating committees that ‘eat’ public money. If you want something not to be done, establish many Committees. There are too many Committees that will bog-down the counties and increase their wage bill. Let us make governance as lean as possible and decision making as fast as possible to enable accountability to be easy. When oversight is done, it will be easy to know what particular role is for the governor, for example, the Governor for Narok County cannot run and say that they cannot manage Narok Town because the Act of Parliament says that it is the responsibility of the city manager. Responsibility must lie where it belongs. Unfortunately, I am struggling to move this Bill because I do not agree with most of its clauses. The conversation about what a town, a centre or an urban area is must be finalised by the relevant Committee which is the Committee on Devolved Government and Intergovernmental Relations, to ensure that we have a proper legal framework that will support this issue. I thank the Technical Committee of the Summit that worked on this Bill and for bringing forth these provisions. I understand some of the pressure that comes from areas that everybody wants to feel that they have a municipality. In the past, people wanted to have municipalities because it brought services closer to them. However, under devolution, services have been brought closer to the people via the wards or village. This is the structure that is provided in Section 54 of the County Governments Act that creates administrative structures to the local level. A municipality like Eldoret Town which has four wards, already, the ward is an entity for purposes of dispensing services. Turning it back to the management of the town might be an issue of, for example, conflict. There is wisdom in the original Act for having various bodies assisting in managing the towns. If there is a governor whose strength is only in the rural area, he or The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}