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{
    "id": 815021,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/815021/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 166,
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    "content": "representative from Treasury, Principal Secretary Department of irrigation, Principal Secretary responsible for Agriculture, Principal Secretary Water services and so on, whereas, the key link that is the Ministry of Devolution and ASAL areas has been left out as indicated in Clause 9. That should tell you the people who drafted this Bill do not care about devolution. Their mentality is about national Government. How can they dare to leave out the Minister in charge of devolution out of a function that deals with counties? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the other reason why I am opposing this Bill is because there is an attempt by the Cabinet Secretary to micromanage counties. Clause 6(1) says- “The Cabinet Secretary shall develop, manage and regulate irrigation throughout Kenya and to this extent shall ensure the effective exercise and performance by any authority or person under the authority of the Cabinet Secretary of their powers and duties in relation to irrigation and drainage, including water harvesting and storage for irrigation.” What tells this Cabinet Secretary that county governments cannot manage and regulate irrigation in their counties? They have the capacity. What is it that any time we want to create boards, we must mention particular Ministries. In Tana River, for example, we have the largest irrigation schemes. Why can we not mention by name that the Governor for Tana River County will be sitting as a member of this board? Why can that not be the case? Why must we mention particular Ministries, but we do not want to mention particular counties of interest? Clause 14 states that the Cabinet Secretary will delegate irrigation functions to the counties. What a joke? How can a Cabinet Secretary delegate functions to county governments? That is not the way to go. The best way to make Kenyans enjoy the fruits of devolution is by empowering our governors. While appreciating the problems we, as a nation must appreciate the problems we face and look for their solutions. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, one of the challenges we face is that 80 per cent of this country does not receive adequate rainfall. That is a documented fact. Our counties are in the 80 per cent and the remaining 20 per cent receives erratic rainfall throughout the year. Another challenge is that we need to ensure we have food security in this country. Also, we have so many peasant farmers in this country who we need to empower, increase their level of farm production and allow them to engage in high value return farming so that they move out of poverty. The attention should never be to the traditional irrigation schemes which have been there and not succeeded. Last Friday, I drove through Ahero Irrigation Scheme, but I did not see any activities going on there. The national Government has abandoned those irrigation schemes. What does that tell us, as leaders? That national Government lacks the capacity to manage those irrigation schemes. If that is the case, we then need to look for a solution from outside the traditional approach, which we have had for several years since Independence. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I have said severally in my contributions that this Senate should not condone the suspicion between the national Government and county governments. The Constitution is very clear that we have two levels of government which 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."
}