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{
    "id": 975530,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/975530/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 298,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Makali Mulu (",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Kitui Central, WDM-K): Thank you, Hon. Speaker for giving me the chance to add my voice to this important debate. I want to say, my colleagues - the Mover and the Seconder - have done justice to this BPS. So, I will try to add value to areas where they have not been able to provide more details. But even as I start, it is important to remind the House that this House has a constitutional mandate to make the Budget. So, even as those other consultations take place, it is important for us to realise that the House must be respected. Hon. Speaker, looking at this, I just want to start from Page One of the Report, by quoting the theme of the Budget. I think the Leader of the Majority Party had mentioned this. It is: “Harnessing the Big Four for Job Creation and Economic Prosperity.” This being a policy document, it is important that we interrogate the policies. I know my Chair has spoken a lot about the Big Four Agenda. I want to say that if the Big Four Agenda is supposed to be the main theme of this BPS, we have to do much more work in this area. Hon. Speaker, in addition to what my colleagues said, in terms of the Big Four Agenda, there are three things which must be done if the policy has to make any sense. The first one is the issue of implementation matrix. That must be sorted out. The issue of accountability framework must be sorted out and last but not least, we must have a clear monitoring and evaluation framework. Unless that is done, we will not obtain that policy direction. The other point I want to discuss is that when you look at the BPS, there are a number of conditional grants that are supposed to be sent to the counties. In terms of policy, we need to have a very clear framework of how these conditional grants are going to be implemented and monitored. For instance, we have been sending conditional grants to the counties since they became effective. The question is: For how long are we going to continue sending conditional grants? I want to give an example. We have been giving conditional grants to Level 5 hospitals. The thinking behind that was that the Level 5 hospitals would be more of regional health centres where people can go from other counties to visit and get services. However, with the implementation of the county government budgets and plans, a number of other health facilities have been upgraded to a level that there might be no need to visit the Level 5 hospitals. Hon. Speaker, the policy question is: Is it not time we reviewed that policy to find out whether there is need to continue pumping money to Level 5 hospitals or it is time the conditional grants are shared among all the counties, so that counties also upgrade their health facilities? 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."
}