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{
    "id": 813478,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/813478/?format=api",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, it is very important that most counties are now working on their county budgets. Most of them have not factored in even the CIDP. They have been in the same size that we do after every decade or so and it has not always been up to date. I think what is important in this Bill is that there will be a regular up to date statistics to ensure if we are doing a CIDP or annual development plans as per the County Governments Act, it will be very timely. The CIDP is anchored in the law, but most of the county budgets have not factored in what we have said. That is why when you ask county governments what they have done with their CIDP, they do not have statistics of who attended, how many attended and what the agenda was. Therefore, when such statistics will be in place, it will be easy for the Members of the County Assemblies to ensure that they allocate resources appropriately as per the county. Secondly, the issue of statistics is very important because under the Constitution, the issue of the Equalization Fund has not been dealt with appropriately because we have the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA). In future, the decisions made by the CRA will be based on the statistics that are up to date such that when they are making the decisions in our counties across the country, they have up to date statistics. There are so many areas in the Equalization Fund that have not been factored in because they are using the census. It is good that we have statistics. The census is important in this country because we will know which county has quite a number of citizens. Nowadays, we use the census for interesting reasons. Apart from procreation, we are also using the census for politics. That is why people can stand today and say which community has the highest number of voters. It is based on the census. The census results were meant for development reasons. It was not meant for issues that some of us would want to use. Madam Temporary Speaker, I have not seen in the Bill a mention of the use of the internet. The X and Y generations that some of us have grown into are allergic to papers. Therefore, we would want to go online on social media platforms, google and we will get the statistics. I hope that Sen. Farhiya will ensure that we factor in the use of internet. I would like to thank the Speaker for the good work. At least, we have access to internet, but the speed is still slow. I hope that it will improve in future; there is always room for improvement. If there is an issue on the boundary between Isiolo and Meru, for example, by a click of a button, I should tell from the statistics how many people live there and how many animals are there. If there is an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in Nandi County or Uasin Gishu County, where you come from, how can we access the information? Madam Temporary Speaker, these are some of the things we should put on an online portal. It should be created now that we have the Ministry in charge of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) on its own. That should be in line with the Cabinet policy. We have the Data Protection Bill and there is a challenge in terms of the use of cyber. We now have cyber crime laws in place. Sen. Farhiya should look into this so that we can also include the use of internet in terms of ensuring that statistics are shared across various organisations and multi agencies. I agree with the Senior Counsel, Sen. Omogeni when he said that the problems we have in counties are very interesting. You will find a Member of Parliament (MP) giving out bursaries under the national Government Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) and after two weeks or so, the governor goes back and gives bursaries. Our beloved 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."
}