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{
    "id": 803101,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/803101/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 273,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "county governments. So, this Bill has come at the right time. In fact, if the Deputy Senate Minority Whip had not brought it, this is one of the Bills I would have brought in the balance of my time in this Senate of the Twelfth Parliament. It is important to devolve the work of the Government Printer because we can publish very important documents like the County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs), budgets and several other regulations that are developed at the county level. When I was campaigning, I really talked about gazetting important documents like the CIDPs. If you go to most counties, you will realise that the first CIDPs were not gazetted. So, there are many versions of the first CIDP and, therefore, it will be difficult to find the first CIDP that was in use. If we do not devolve functions of the Government Printer, we are likely to run into the same problem, where you find that we are using a document that is not gazetted. Most budgets were not gazetted during the 2013-2017 period. You could find an original budget, the first version of the supplementary budget and then a supplementary budget of a supplementary budget. No budget was gazetted. It is very difficult for us, as Senators, to oversight county governments if we do not know the CIDP or the budget that is in use at any particular time because there is no specific place where we can go and demand for a particular document. The same way, if you wanted to find the size of one metre, you only need to go to a place called Sèvres in Paris, France, and you will find a metal rod one metre long placed at zero degrees centigrade. That is the size of one metre. If you wanted to know the version of CIDP that is in use, for example, in Makueni County at any particular time, it is very difficult to know because that document did not go through the Office of the Government Printer. I support this Bill because it will safeguard the interests of counties in terms of oversight. The people who are supposed to authorize publication of documents are well stated in this Bill, for example, the governor, the CEC, the speaker of the assembly, the secretary of a board within a county so that if there is any document that is to be gazetted, it must pass through authorized hands. I imagine if you want to put an advert in the national dailies, then you have to come to the national office for that advert to be gazetted. It would be easier now if we had a devolved Government Printer to have that document gazetted first before the advert is put in the daily newspapers. Otherwise, it simply means that most adverts that have been put before in the national dailies have been advertised illegally. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we need to have a provision that the county secretary is supposed to put the regulations in place for operationalization of this Bill. This is a straightforward Bill and I beg to support the formation, decentralization or the devolution of the Office of the Government Printer. I beg to support."
}