Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 871653,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/871653/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 951,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, these are very important committees of this House. First of all, the Senate County Public Accounts and Investments Committee performs a very important duty on behalf of this House in terms of oversight of counties and county governments. We want to note with appreciation the work they did in the last one year in terms of looking at accounts. There was a lot of backlog by the time they were being appointed to this Committee and the Senate expressed the desire to assist the Committee to expeditiously dispense their work. There have been a lot of concerns, particularly on how our money is being used in the counties. To quote the Senate Minority Leader when he spoke here the day before yesterday, there were concerns that we have been reduced to morticians. He also said this in the Senate Business Committee where I was with him. He said that what we do is just postmortem, yet we can avert the problems that are happening in our counties if we apply ourselves innovatively to other mechanisms of dealing with oversight, in fact, from the budgeting stage. I, therefore, agree with those who said that we need to look at the work of the Controller of Budget as part of our oversight responsibility. We need to look at what exactly is being budgeted in our counties and whether our counties are following those budgets. When they do supplementary budgets, what does that money go to? We must develop interest with what is happening in our counties and not just the populist kind of criticism of what is happening in our counties. We must be meticulous in what we do; we must work with professionals who can assist us to interrogate the budgets of our counties. The Controller of Budget should be a friend of the Senate and we should work closely with their representatives in the counties. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, now that we have the report of the Controller of Budget that I tabled in the House earlier, we must look at it with a keen eye. We need to find out to what extent they are supported financially, to what extent the Office of Controller of Budget is decentralized and available in our counties and how we can interrogate those budgets. Secondly, we also need to ensure that all budgets of counties. I remember that Sen. Wamatangi, in a conversation I had with him, was saying that we need to propose an amendment to the law to ensure that when the budgets are passed in our counties, they are tabled in this House not just with the Controller of Budget. This should be a requirement of law under the Public Finance Management Act. We should make an amendment to the Public Finance Management Act so that those budgets are deposited The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}