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{
    "id": 943923,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/943923/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 132,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. Allow me to go to the substance of the Motion or the report that is before the House today. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the report has combined 20 counties, as you have rightly stated. For the first time, we are getting a report for the FY2014/2015; we have been on FY2013/2014. This House has rightly pronounced itself saying that is such a historic duration that might not make a lot of sense to this House. At least we have moved one year ahead. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in the FY2014/2015 that we are considering, county governments received a total of Kshs226 billion. In the FY2014/2015, pending bills for county governments stood at Kshs74 billion. Now, this is where the issue of pending bills started going wrong. In the very first year of devolution, the pending bills for county governments was Kshs62.8 billion out of a total allocation of Kshs210 billion.You would expect that pending bills would catch up with counties several years later. However, it appears that even on theFY2013/2014, county governments were not settling obligations promptly. They will argue that some of those commitments were long term in nature and, therefore, they will become due at a later date. However, the pending bills never reduced.That is one of the first observations that we have made in that report, and you will find the issue of pending bills cutting across all the 20 counties. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in consideration of this problem, the nation sat down the governors and the National Executive at the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Committee (IBEC). They commissioned the Auditor-General to carry out a special audit on pending bills across the Republic of Kenya for county governments and for the national Government.The information we have is that this is an exercise that cost Kshs200 million. Unfortunately to date, there is no single governor who agrees with the findings of the Auditor-General on a special audit that consumed Kshs200 million. We called the Auditor-General and the former Controller of Budget (CoB) to appear before the Committeeto explain to us how they carried out an exercise which then met so much resistance from the governors. On this issue of pending bills, the CoB, the Auditor-General, the Head of Treasury, the former Cabinet Secretary (CS) of the National Treasury and the Permanent Secretary (PS) in the National Treasury were very key players in this consideration. All 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."
}