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{
    "id": 935027,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/935027/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 47,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kathiani, WDM-K",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Robert Mbui",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1750,
        "legal_name": "Robert Mbui",
        "slug": "robert-mbui"
    },
    "content": "I rise to support the Equalisation Fund Bill (National Assembly Bill No.43 of 2019) brought to this House by Hon. Kamket. First, I would like to congratulate my colleague, Hon. Kamket, for doing a great job of coming up with a Bill like this. It will help to ensure that the funds that are supposed to be given for the support of marginalised communities are distributed in an orderly manner. We should not forget that he also comes from a marginalised community. Basically, he is doing the work that he was elected to do in this House. I want to congratulate him. The rest of us need to emulate him and ensure that we come up with such Bills. I support the Bill. It talks about the amount of money which, I think, is 0.5 per cent of all the revenue collected by the national Government each year and any income generated from the proceeds of the Fund and the cumulative amount of the national revenue from previous years that has not been spent. I would like to also mention that maybe he should consider adding: “And any other money.” Sometimes, donors want to support marginalised communities. It will be a good idea to have all that money consolidated. So, I will propose that he considers putting in the provision “other money that comes from donors”, so that they also come through this structure. The proposal of the Equalisation Fund Board is good. I have looked at the composition and it is great. However, I have noticed one problem which marginalised areas face which is lack of sufficient food. When you look at the composition of the board, it is proposed to have a chairperson from the marginalised communities and the Principal Secretaries (PSs) for Water and Sanitation, Transport and Infrastructure Development and the National Treasury as members. Every time we look at the marginalised communities, we see starvation and people ravaged by drought. It would have been great to put the Principal Secretary for Agriculture and Irrigation as one of the board members. That is one area where they are hard hit. Before you go to health and water, the people must be fed. Therefore, it is important that he also considers putting PS for Agriculture and Irrigation as one of the board members. The other thing I agree with is the issue of local communities. It has created structures. We have a structure for the Fund at the national level and at the local level, where we have local equalisation fund committees. This is great. There will be public participation when it comes to public projects funded by public funds. If we create a situation where local organisations and leaders in the affected communities are directly involved in the implementation of projects that are to be funded, that will be great. If you have noticed, when you talk about the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF), it works well because every project has a project management committee at the grassroots. People at the grassroots are the ones who tell the community how much has been funded, what is being done and who is doing it. That makes the people to accept the projects. Whenever you do projects under these circumstances, people buy-in. They believe in them and accept them as their projects. Therefore, they protect them. 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."
}