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{
    "id": 924608,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/924608/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 485,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "blown open that 7 per cent. On average, county assemblies are getting 12 per cent of revenue. At the end of the year, they remain with so much money. No wonder in certain cases, you will find that county assemblies are struggling to find trips so that they can exhaust the money allocated to them. I believe that we need to give them ceilings. However, the ceilings and the 7 per cent threshold in the PFMA regulations should not be that distant. If you take 12.5 per cent which is the current average, give it to county assemblies, then as a Governor, you are denied funds that you will have deployed for development. County assemblies still have to go through the county treasury for expenditure approval. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it was the case for Machakos County where the Governor made it clear that he was not going to approve a requisition of the County Assembly for funds. There is form 1 a, b and c. There is a certain form that must be initialized by the Head of Treasury before the Controller of Budget releases funds. Theoretically, we have said that county assemblies are independent as far as financial management is concerned. However, they are still controlled by the county treasuries. It is a difficult thing to deal with, if there was full autonomy. This is because, even if there was full autonomy, at the end of the day, the money that goes to the county goes into one pot called the County Revenue Fund. There could only be one person as the gatekeeper responsible for that County Revenue Fund. Part of it goes to county assemblies. Unless we now create a county assembly revenue fund with a different accounting officer, we will still have the so-called interference. You will still find the case where a governor instructs his CEC not to approve requisitions from a county assembly. There are several other risks that I know, my colleagues and those who have read the report, will talk about. Allow me to highlight one which is payment to the Council of Governors (CoG). This offends the Inter-Governmental Relations Act. Sometimes it is unfortunate, we have asked ourselves what happened to good men when they become governors. Some of our colleagues who have been in this House, who have made a very clear interpretation of the Inter-Governmental Relations Act, who have been convinced that the CoG should be funded from the consolidated fund, are at the frontline in making contributions to the CoG. It is not that we do not want the CoG or we want to paralyze it. If the CoG is to be funded under the Inter-Governmental Relations Act by the Consolidated Fund, it is the same thing as political parties, they are supposed to be funded under the Political Parties Fund from the Consolidated Fund. A governor would not say that because the Government has refused to release money to the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party, therefore, it will take county money to pay ODM party. This argument governors are using that because the Government has refused to fund the CoG, now they are using county money to fund CoG. It was interesting when we met the Governor of Meru where we agreed to disagree, or we disagreed to agree. He maintained that as far as he is concerned, there is a lot of value in counties making remittances to the CoG. We have recommended in our Fiduciary Risk Report that all governors who have made these nugatory payments to the COG be surcharged and the money recovered from 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."
}