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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, Article 184(1)(c) of the Constitution provides for public participation by the residents in the governance of urban areas and cities. This has never been done anywhere. When you talk about membership, when you look for representation from the AAK in Wajir County, they are not there. The representatives of the LSK come on and off when there are cases. There are no associations of urban areas or cities, yet we are told that we must have all these members. Out of the nine members of the County Executive Committee (CEC), four will be appointed by the governor. On the other five members, who are supposed to come from organisations – which do not exist in certain areas – the governor can go, pinpoint and pick whoever he wants and pass it. Therefore, in this case, I do not think these things will be helpful at all. Therefore, I urge that this issue should be discussed in general all over the country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the issue of gazettement of members in certain areas, as Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. has said, if the county assemblies have already approved that, then the committee which will be formed should do this job urgently. This is because when you want to appoint anybody, the people must have the requisite qualifications and you must have the monies. The county assemblies should also be involved so that the leaders are aware of some of these issues. However, the Executive just gazetted and appointed these members. In doing so, we will create a lot of problems to those areas. Section 13(3) of the Act, requires that the CECs ensure gender equity, representation of Persons of With Disability (PWDs), youths and marginalised groups when appointing members of the cities and municipal boards. Most of these people who will be appointed will just be political appointees, who will not be very helpful in doing these things. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the other membership, which I talked about earlier, do not exist because, for example, they do not stay in Wajir County. You do not want to bring other people from outside the county, because when you are appointing these board members, they must have lived in that area or have houses in the county for more than five years. Therefore, anybody who lives in Nairobi, Mombasa or anywhere else cannot be appointed. They will just come for meetings and things like that, but they do not stay in the counties. Those issues will create more problems than the way things are right now. The boards are expected to budget and submit their budgets to the county governor. I feel that the municipalities and their bosses will be conduits for money to be eaten by the county governors, thus, they will not be helpful to the communities. As earlier stated by Sen. Orengo, we used to have municipalities, town councils and urban councils which were not useful at all. Therefore, it will not be helpful for the governors to take the county money, which is not used prudently at this particular time, and give it to municipalities, urban areas or the small centres. I want to urge the House to follow up on this issue and make sure that these things do not continue unabated. I support."
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