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{
    "id": 875617,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/875617/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 361,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kisumu East, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Shakeel Shabbir",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 140,
        "legal_name": "Ahmed Shakeel Shabbir Ahmed",
        "slug": "shakeel-shabbir"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. At one time, we were being frustrated by the Auditor-General’s officers who would tell the fund managers: “Do not worry about it. As long as you deal with us, you will be okay.” That is a fact. I can put it on record. Some of my colleagues were there and we put this thing to order. I hope the Auditor-General’s staff are now able to deal with this thing. The other thing which is very important is the fact that the NG-CDF is probably one of the major things of development in this country that has been valued worldwide. I have been to very many countries and people tell me that the NG-CDF and the M-Pesa are wonders. People ask: “How does the NG-CDF and M-Pesa work? We are way up there with M-Pesa and the NG- CDF and I think the NG-CDF is a programme that we have developed and we will continue to develop to make it much better. However, there are issues of impartiality and equalisation. I think in the 11th Parliament, we made a few mistakes and one of the mistakes was to allow a very difficult decision where everybody got the same allocation of the NG-CDF irrespective of whether you are 10,000 people in the constituency or you are 200,000. I think that mistake was not what the NG-CDF designed to do. The NG-CDF was meant to equalise and help the constituencies that had been marginalised over time to bring them up to the same level. There are constituencies which get the same funding as mine. There is a constituency which is the size of one of my wards, whose schools are made of concrete. They do not know what to do with the funds. So, they allocate bursaries adequately. I have 55 primary schools and 14 secondary schools and we have to give bursaries from the same amount. That is one of the things that we may need the NG-CDF Committee to look at and see how we can put it back on track. Even the Ministry of Education and the Office of the President are now requesting us to build classrooms yet the Ministry of Education may be having 100 times more funds than we have. We are indebted by requests and also what is happening. We were all elected on the same thing. We have MCAs and Members of Parliament, but it appears that county governments do not even carry out the little that they have been asked to do like the construction of ECD centres and we are carrying the burden for others. I think the amount of money that has been spent on the laptops programme… One of my colleagues has just told me now: “Do not worry. We are going to put that money into computer labs.” It is not what we needed. We needed this programme to be put under the NG-CDF. Right now, the NG-CDF is owed Kshs4.6 billion in arrears. If you divide it by 290 constituencies, it is something in the region of Kshs60 million to Kshs80 million per constituency. We are wondering why the National Treasury is not able to give us this money. It is what we call teaming and leading. So, we are using money for the 2016/2017 Financial Year for 2014 projects. We demand the money and we have been asking the NG-CDF Committee and the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning to do something. We have also taken it to different committees like the Budget and Appropriations Committee, but I do not understand why the National Treasury will not give us that money, which is due. It is part of the constitutional requirement that they must give us the funds. When we talk about it, we are harassed. When we talk to the Budget and Appropriations Committee about it, they are also concerned, but when it comes to this issue, we are then hounded together and given warnings from wherever, that we are not going to give you this. Remember we were cheated. I use that The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}