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{
    "id": 842461,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/842461/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 79,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "content": "projects are funded, we can be working towards ensuring that people have water to do irrigation to ensure that there is food security. Kenyan citizens should at least have something to eat. We are getting to a situation where the population is becoming desperate. There is public outcry about the proposed tax increase on VAT. Some people are wondering how insensitive and unreasonable the Government can be to the extent that a mama mboga in the village who operates either by hawking or getting somebody to give them Kshs100 or 200 to feed their family for two or three days can be taxed an amount of 12 per cent when she transfers Kshs100 to her son or daughter through M-Pesa. We need to collectively or wholesomely look at this matter. You will realise that we require certain services. You cannot get services without payment. However, as policy makers of the country, as we consider how to bridge the gap in this country--- Honestly, it is ironical for the Government to propose reduction of taxes on casinos or gaming and increase VAT and the transfer of money service tax which the very common mwananchi is using to ensure that in one way or another, he or she is able to share the little they have with members of the family wherever they are situated in the country. One of the greatest mandate of the Senate is to defend the interests of counties and to oversight national revenue allocated to our counties. Therefore some questions must come to our minds. How do we effectively exercise the oversight role? For quite some time, the Senate has been asking for support to ensure that we have a monitoring and evaluation kind of fund. Meru County has nine constituencies. I am required, by virtue of my mandate, to traverse nine sub-counties. The Governor gets Kshs8 billion and Kshs7 million for recurrent and development expenditure in the county. You are supposed to oversee what the money is going to do because there is revenue from the national Government. Tell me how you will get from one sub-county to another. As a Senator with nine constituencies, tell me what support staff I require to effectively discharge my mandate. This applies to nearly each of the elected Senators here because I know there is no single--- Probably the Deputy Senate Majority Leader has the smallest county because it only has two constituencies but there are others that have 12 constituencies. So, it is important to understand facilitation of Senators to effectively exercise their mandate. This is not something that we can play around with. For those of us that sit in the County Public Accounts and Investments Committee (CPAIC), the reports that we get from counties regarding how money has been spent or wasted require serious intervention in terms of ensuring that there is a team with somebody in charge to follow up on what each and every coin will do. We have finances that go to the counties as conditional grants. These include monies to hospitals, the Kenya Roads Board (KRB) and donor-funded projects. We cannot just leave this matter to the governors to decide on how to spend all that money without public participation. We have to agree. There are structures in the county governments. Governors have to sit with their County Executive Committee (CEC) members to agree on projects in the county. No CEC has the capacity to question or put a governor into serious discussion to a level of 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."
}