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{
    "id": 893123,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/893123/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 289,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Turkana West, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Daniel Nanok",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2947,
        "legal_name": "Daniel Epuyo Nanok",
        "slug": "daniel-epuyo-nanok"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, once again. I rise to second the Bill. Statistics play a key function as far as development matters are concerned. They play a key role in planning. As the English people say, if you do not plan then you are planning to fail. At the level of the county governments, this new office that is being created—the county statistician—will play a crucial role in enabling our county governments to deliver services and spearhead development based on facts and real figures. Therefore, the planning at that level is going to improve with the advent of this office. You know that this being a new dispensation for us as a country, the Constitution of Kenya 2010 ushered in devolution which brought us county governments together with the national government, being two levels of government that must consult and co-operate in serving Kenyans. The new arrangement brought with it new dimensions and dynamics of governance, development and service provision. Therefore, by passing this Bill to create the office of county statistician, we will be improving service delivery at the county level. As I have observed, if you have your data correct, for example, the number of residents in a particular county or even a sub-location of a sub-county then you are able to align your development plans to those numbers in a better way than it was before. Before the county governments came into place, all plans were being done at the national level. The KNBS was the custodian of all the statistics. If you were to go into those statistics, some of the areas of this country had no specific data about certain parameters or indicators of development. Even in terms of the number of people found in various areas of this country, some of were in doubt. So, with this new office being created at the county level, we should be in a position to improve the kind of data that we have about the various indicators of development in this country. Looking at the various clauses proposed in this Bill, one that is of interest is the one that gives the qualifications of the county statistician. Some of the amendments being proposed narrow down the kind of person that would serve in this office. Some of the observations that we need to make generally about some of these offices is that sometimes we legislate so narrowly that we actually predetermine officeholders even before the process of recruitment and identification of the person starts – by the nature of the laws that we make. At the level of a county statistician, I think it is imperative that we require that one is a manager. The county statistician is not the day-to-day statistics officer who does the technical work in that office. At that level, he or she is a manager who is supposed to bring together many people and facilities in order to get the desired results. So, you definitely want the county statistician to be a more open officer who would bring into the office aspects of management and not necessarily the technical aspects. There are some words that were used in the Bill which I think require a bit of improvement. The Committee undertook to do that. For example, the Bill talks about “develop and support”, words that cannot be measured. For instance, how much support would you give a process? With regard to “develop”, there can be an outcome that can be used to measure that activity. So, this Bill is spot on. The KNBS is now the custodian of all our statistics at this point in time. However, as we bring on board the county statistics office, I want to believe, with the constitutional requirement of co-operation and consultation between the two levels of 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."
}