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{
    "id": 812926,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/812926/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 181,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Kibiru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13196,
        "legal_name": "Charles Reubenson Kibiru",
        "slug": "charles-reubenson-kibiru"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I rise also to support the Bill on public participation. From the start, public participation is a way of ensuring that citizens get value for money. We have seen several projects that are coming up in our counties. We have seen for starters how the budget is made. However, there is one question we keep on asking ourselves. Yes, we have made the budget and asked people to participate by telling us what they would want included in the budget. However, one keeps on asking whether there is a mechanism of feedback to ensure that once the budget has been made through that participatory process, the people who participated in doing so get feedback. Where people recommend that they want a dispensary, because of resources, the powers that be in a county may not be in a position to give the community what they asked for. How does the community get the feedback that, indeed, what was promised is not going to happen or is going to happen? As the people go ahead to do the guidelines for this Bill, it is important to look at the issue of feedback mechanism. The other question as we do public participation is that there could be undue influence given the kind of projects that the community wants to undertake. One wonders how we will mitigate against those kinds of undue influence. For example, currently in my county, public participation has been carried out for people to select factory millers for their coffee. We have cases where some societies are complaining that public participation was not carried out or it had undue influence from some interested millers. The issues of conflict of interest are coming up. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is important, as the guidelines are developed for the public participation, that we ensure the public is also educated on the pros and cons of some of the issues they want to discuss. Before we ask the public to participate, they need to understand the pros and cons of some of the issues that will be taken to the public to decide on. We all know that we have public participation in the budget making process. However, we also need public participation in monitoring what has been done. As Senators, as we oversight, we need to do develop mechanisms of seeing that the public participation that has happened proposing certain issues to be done by the county governments are carried out. We do that by developing tools including management information systems so that we can make the public participate by way of communicating to our offices, to ensure that whatever they participated in is adhered to. Public participation is also in the Nyumba Kumi . I believe it is working well because communities are asked to come up with names of the people whom they trust and are of integrity, who can participate in the issues of security. I believe that in certain parts of this country, the public has participated in establishing the Nyumba Kumi affairs. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I conclude, public participation is a good way to go. As mentioned, it will have value-addition and it will ensure value for money. We would like to look at the pros and cons of every aspect that is put into public participation. With those few remarks, I beg to support the Bill."
}