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{
    "id": 813294,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/813294/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 38,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Those who have studied economics - I am not one of them; just the little I have heard - will attest that there is benefit in the economics of scale. When you have a bigger entity procuring for purposes of such kind of huge investments as roads, it leads all of us to agree that it is better at the centre. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I know that we are a House that protects devolution and counties and county governments, but we should not start having this defensive approach to it to the extent that we behave as though we have no role in what Kenya can do as a country; as one unitary entity called Kenya. It is still our responsibility as a House. We still have a role when it comes to equitable distribution of resources to the various counties in this country even if it will be done by the national Government. In any case, my argument has always been that under Article 174 and the discussion about devolution is not an entity, a system or a governance mechanism only to be used by county governments. People must divorce the arguments of what is devolution from county governments so that we appreciate as Article 174 says that it is expected that the national Government, as much as county governments would also do, are accountable to the people of Kenya on matters devolution. How have you devolved resources to the local level? I know that in this House, we have a problem with the CDF. The only problem we have is the political influence on that CDF. No Senator can tell me here that it is the right thing to cancel money that is going to the county or constituency say an average of Kshs100 million and tell Kenyans that let us return that money to the centre so that it can be managed at the national level. That is already a good working concept. My only argument with the CDF has always been that we need to identify which national government function it will do. Mr. Speaker, Sir, in my county, we have had a conversation with our MPs and we agreed that we give priority to schools so that we no longer do harambees for primary and secondary schools. We can use the resources that have been devolved to do that, if we can agree and that law can provide that that money, apart from the bursary will deal with education infrastructure and to a small extent security-related matters, building police stations and so forth. That is already a good concept. I want to request this House that we should not be apprehensive about any national Government structure or resources being devolved like the case is with the roads. I would persuade all of us that we need to accept that if a road is crossing more than one county and has significant economic importance, it is necessary that the centre should be able to take it as a national road, either as a highway or national trunk road for purposes of the national Government institution to borrow loans, construct those roads and maintain them. The debate we are having here is that we are only focusing on how the levies will be shared. Those levies are called Road Maintenance Levies; they are not road construction levies. In order to undertake the construction of the road, you must have the capacity to construct the road to the quality and standards we are talking about for you to get the levy to maintain it. If you look at what KeNHA has been doing, and I want to be very frank on this one, even if it is the roads to go to Kisumu, Eldoret or Mombasa, even with the floods that occurred recently, the roads done by KeNHA do not suffer so much damage yet they 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."
}