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{
    "id": 875938,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/875938/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 261,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Homa Bay Town, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Peter Kaluma",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1565,
        "legal_name": "George Peter Opondo Kaluma",
        "slug": "george-peter-opondo-kaluma"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. My colleagues have spoken to the good that NG-CDF is doing for the society. I will not dwell on it. I would like to emphasise that if we are a nation that truly believes in devolution, then all the funds we devolve from the national Government downwards should take the form and structure of NG-CDF, both in terms of the manner they are implemented to the manner they are structured. My colleagues have said this but it bears repeating that this is the only devolved fund where the political leadership only plays an oversight role. If we structured this Fund in that manner, we would go very far. This is the only Fund where less than 10 per cent of the funding goes to sustaining the processes and the administrative and recurrent work of the team down there. Looking at the reports of the Auditor-General on the devolved funds, those other funds like the one we are taking to the counties which is managed by our colleagues are very difficult to audit. This is a Fund which is specific to an approved project proposal, an amount and an authority to incur expenditure. If our county assemblies just structured the monies we devolve to the constituency, that they sit down and decide that this amount will go to this health facility, that amount to this stadium and another amount to this road, if they undertake oversight on an itemised basis, we would be a First World country any day. There is a reason I wanted to speak on this matter. We are talking about the audit of this Fund. Honourable colleagues have seen a weakness in this audit process which we should deal with. Since I became an MP several years back, each time you hear the auditors are on the ground with the NG–CDF team in one vehicle going into the villages saying they are undertaking audit. How do you audit a person you are in a vehicle with? During the last audit, I told my NG–CDF to abandon them somewhere on the road so that they go and do their audit. My team should do its work. My idea about audit - and I am speaking to the Auditor-General and the internal audit system at the NG–CDF - is that it should be an independent process from which even the NG-DFC, including the MP who sits on the Constituency Oversight Committee can learn from in terms of the weaknesses in the systems of implementation of the Fund in the constituency. I remember I told my team that they are not engaged to undertake audit with the auditor. In the end, invariably because of that weakness, you find that those auditors give you reports based on who treated them best among the officers of the Fund they walk with from constituency to constituency. We must have an independent process. The NG-CDF is the easiest Fund to audit. Money will be proposed to the constituency. The constituency cannot get that money before the NG-CDF sits with the constituents and identifies projects which are then put in a proposal. The proposal is subjected to verification and approval by the board. The money comes on the head of each project. An auditor needs to get the approved proposal from the board and go to my constituency. In a constituency like Homa Bay Town, just like those ones in Kisumu, we are dealing with over 80 per cent allocation of the funds towards education. You will get them into education infrastructure. Just go to my constituency. Do not involve my NG-CDF again. Go to the villages. Ask where Ndiru Primary School is, which is in the proposal. Check whether the two-block classroom is there. Go to Homa 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."
}