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{
    "id": 782481,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/782481/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 348,
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    "content": "officers. There are certain counties like my own, where the chief officers went to court and were granted an order that barred the governor from interfering with their contracts. You have a situation where you have got a new governor working with chief officers appointed by the previous governor and who were actively campaigning for the previous governor. In such cases, the new governor can resort to disciplinary proceedings and say that the law does not allow you to participate in political campaigns. I urge governors who have issues with the chief officers inherited from past administration to use the right process, procedure in law. It cannot be a blanket condemnation. However, it should also be possible for a governor to choose the kind of team that he wants to work with to achieve the vision that he has for that county. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me talk about the County Public Service Boards (CPSBs) which we have tried to enhance. We want to ensure independence, professionalism, transparency and equity in the functioning of CPSBs. I wish we could look at the CPSBs much more keenly. We have modeled them on Article 251 that talks about Constitutional Commissions. We have created procedures for their removal similar to removal of Constitutional office holders. We have given them a duration similar to the duration of the Chair of the IEBC and any other constitutional office. We have seen in the last election CPSBs Members being chief campaigners and campaign agents of governors. When the governor they supported loses and a new governor is in place and the new governor wants to use the same board to recruit; the CPSB frustrates the efforts of the new governors. We must ask ourselves whether we should tie the tenure of the County Public Service Board to the term of a governor. We must ask ourselves whether we should stagger the terms of members of the County Public Service Boards. Assuming that all these CPSBs were appointed on a certain date in 2014 and all of them probably within the same month or year and their term will expire in the same year or month, you will have a situation where you are going to lack institutional memory. You will not have continuity between one board and the other. I hope that as we move to the next stage, we will give this further thought. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have looked at the County Governments Act, particularly on the power of county secretaries. The Act, in Section 56(2), says: “The county public service shall be headed by a county secretary appointed under section 44.” Yet, again, we have the County Public Service Board, which is supposed to manage the human resource element within the counties. There is bound to be conflict between the county secretaries and these boards. We have seen those conflicts in several counties. I can tell of cases where even the County Public Service Board went to court against the governor and the county secretary to seek an interpretation on their mandate. This is because the board felt that the county secretary and the governor were encroaching on their mandate. I hope that as we process this Bill, we will provide that clarity. I also hope that we will professionalise our County Public Service Boards. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, human resource management is a regulated profession. The law says that you cannot be a human resource manager if you do not belong to the Institute of Human Resource Management. For you to belong to this institute, you must show some competence. We must make it mandatory that every Member of a County 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."
}