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{
    "id": 886998,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/886998/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 222,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1835,
        "legal_name": "Anthony Kimani Ichung'Wah",
        "slug": "anthony-kimani-ichungwah"
    },
    "content": "I want to conclude by highlighting a few of the observations that the Committee made as we finalised our work on the Division of Revenue Bill. Top among those observations was the issue of those conditional or special allocations. We observed that with the special allocations in the conditional grants, and in order to ensure that there is value for money, there is need for an enhanced role by the Legislature. When we speak about the Legislature, we are speaking about the Legislature at the national level; that is both Members of Parliament and our Senators. That is why, again, I implore on Members to support the appropriation of an amount of money to our Senators to be able to offer meaningful oversight. I also mean the legislature in our county assemblies to be able to empower them and give them capacity to offer meaningful oversight without necessarily being intimidated by governors. As such, at the National Assembly level, the Budget and Appropriations Committee has committed itself that during the next public hearings, we will endeavour to visit some of the counties that are benefiting from these special allocations and conditional grants to evaluate the projects to see if we have got value for money, and whether we have achieved our targets as per the proposals and justification that formed the basis for resource allocation to these areas. As I said, that is what we did in the last financial year during public participation. At least we are able to evaluate the MES programme to see whether we are really getting value for money. We also identified a few of these areas that are benefiting from these conditional grants. We may be able to look at those that are benefiting from the agricultural support programmes and those that are benefiting from the urban support programme and evaluate whether these conditional grants and special funds are going into meaningful public use. If you are not able to utilise this money properly under the county government structures, for instance, under the urban support programme--- There is no harm if county governments are not able to implement these projects well. the ministries would also implement those projects like they did under what was then christened “the Nairobi Metropolitan Programme” that was done two years ago, which again was funded by the World Bank. The Committee also notes that over the years, substantial resources have been transferred to both the national Government and county governments, in line with the constitutional imperative of resourcing devolved functions. However, on account of the Auditor-General’s reports, the Controller of Budget’s report and parliamentary reports, there is concern of also growing fiduciary risks on county resources due to misapplication and mismanagement of scarce county resources. If this is left unchecked it may curtail the very essence why Kenyans voted in our 2010 constitution to have a devolved structure of government. I believe that if we mitigate against this fiduciary risk, the people of Kenya will enjoy the true fruits of devolution. They will understand why they voted for a devolved structure of government in 2010. It is also important to remind the House and the country at large that, indeed, all the monies being allocated to our county governments is money that should also be overseen at the county level besides the oversight that is done by the Senate. It has become the norm now for most of our MCAs to believe that oversight should be done only by the Senate. That is the second layer of oversight. The primary layer of oversight of county government funds should be in our county assemblies. It is imperative that we continue to build capacity in our county assemblies in terms of the calibre of members that are elected to sit there and also in terms of their intellectual capacity to offer meaningful oversight over the governors. I am happy that some of our county assemblies have started being assertive and holding their ground in terms of"
}