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{
    "id": 895011,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/895011/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 218,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Murkomen",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 440,
        "legal_name": "Onesimus Kipchumba Murkomen",
        "slug": "kipchumba-murkomen"
    },
    "content": "are in county‟s payroll are those who give essential services. We should not have an exaggerated number of persons or reward individuals in terms of employment at the expense of development. One of the messages that we must pass to the citizens of this country is that they should not put pressure on county governments to employ people from different corners. If there is any pressure that citizens of Kenya must put in national Government and county governments is to create conducive environment for investors to come and invest in our counties so that they can hire the young people who needs jobs. We need more people to be employed by the private sector. However, if we push for more people to be employed in the public sector, we will actually eat into the same resources that would have been used to attract more investors which would lead to hiring more people. Madam Temporary Speaker, there is a culture in this nation that I do not know how we will deal with it. Everybody believes that if you have to be employed, it has to be by the Government. All over the world, the role of a government is to create more employment opportunities to its people through the private sector. Sadly, that is the same mentality of even colleagues who were Senators here, but they are no longer with us. Many people face similar pressure of being asked how many people they employed from a certain village when they were governors. That is a disease that we must deal with because due to pressure, a governor may create some job opportunities here and there. As I said, governors are being put under pressure because it is linked to votes and the only language that people can hear is when you go to their locality and tell them that so and so has been employed. That is an issue that we must address. We are likely to have the same situation in the current audited reports. Sen. Olekina and other Members of the County Public Accounts and Investments Committee (CPAIC) are here and can attest to that. If you check, you will find that most of the audited reports by the Auditor-General for Financial Year 2017/2018 are about the number of staff that were employed for a short period of time because governors wanted to get votes. Therefore, they employed people for six months. Thus, the money that would have gone to roads, hospitals and other developments was wasted. The President talked about the state of our devolution and that we must deal with the issue of human resource. Secondly, we must deal with corruption. That is an issue that we have been debating about since the establishment of this Senate. We know there is mismanagement and pilferage of resources in our counties. You may find a county government allocating money on a road that was built by the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) or money by the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF). We all know that there is duplication of duties to facilitate stealing of our money by county officials. I am not the kind of person who believes in knowing how a person becomes rich quickly. My concern is that you can find a road built by the national Government for Kshs5 million and another one built by the county government at Kshs10 million which is worse than the one where Kshs5 million was used. Those are the things that irk Members of this House. We must assist our people to fight corruption that is thriving in the counties. 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."
}