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"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
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"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise to second this Motion. Before I do so, I beg you to allow me. This Chairman who has just moved the Motion, Sen. Eddy Oketch there, Sen. Abdalla, Sen. Okenyuri, Sen. Mariam and myself have spent a lot of time, painstakingly listening to all commissions, combing through this BPS to bring you a quality report. See the level of participation in the House. We are joking. We have been saying all over that the Senate should be allowed to look at the budget and that the National Assembly should not be the only one doing it. Where are we today when we are discussing the same matter of the little intervention that we have been given? This deceit must end in this country. Leaders have come to Nairobi to joke with the lives of the people. Today, thanks to the lead that was given by the Chairperson I have made shocking discoveries in the BPS. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1527703,
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"text_counter": 107,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
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"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
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"content": "Sen. Richard Onyonka has been speaking time without end about budgeted corruption. Inside this BPS, truly there is documented evidence of budgeted corruption. The way they have done it in this one is that they have taken Kshs29.77 billion that is supposed to go to counties, to the national Government. By taking it to the national Government, before you look at it, you can scream that the principle of the national Government carrying out functions that are meant to be done by a devolved structure of government is the only one they are abusing. They have done far more. In the process, they have made an amorphous reference to projects and programmes that they will never implement. As I second, allow me to draw the attention of this Senate and the whole country to these big jokes. No wonder the Cabinet Secretary of Finance and Economic Planning chickened out. He did not come before us because he knew we were to draw his attention to the Kshs29.77 billion which he is allowing to be taken away from county governments. If that money had been allowed to go to county governments, the shareable revenue would have risen from Kshs387 billion that we have given counties to Kshs419 billion. This is a crime scene. Mr. Speaker, Sir, allow me, I know you will not refuse, to move a Motion of censure against the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economic Planning to send him a clear message. He cannot tell the media that he cannot come before our committee because he expects us to make reference to the presentation he gave in the National Assembly. He is underrating this institution to very high levels. In this misadventure, a sum of Kshs7.2 billion meant for health by county governments has been removed and brought to Afya House. To do what? A sum of Kshs50 million to go to Kigumo Hospital in Nyeri County. Why can they not allow the Governor of Nyeri to implement that development worth Kshs50 million in his hospital in his county? Secondly, a sum of Kshs50 million to go to Kibugwa Health Centre in Tharaka Nithi. Why can they not allow the Governor of Tharaka Nithi to preside over that development? Mr. Speaker, Sir, a figure of Kshs100 million is to go to Kiambu to Lusigetti Hospital in Kikuyu Constituency. This is not equity. In the entire Nyanza province has one such a hospital serving four million people. However, in Kiambu, there are five such hospitals. As to keep on adding insult to injury, they can afford to add them another Kshs100 million. This is a House of equity. We want to call the National Treasury to order. This is deal cutting and not budgeting. They have also entered an amorphous thing and they call Reproductive Maternal Neonatal Care Child and Adolescent Health Project. They have given it Kshs1.8 billion. They can lie to some of the Senators, but you cannot lie to me. I am a doctor of medicine. I know what you are talking about. This is an opportunity to remove money from the budget. Mr. Speaker, Sir, cause the Cabinet Secretary to come before us. We want to pin him down so that this is corrected before we go to printed estimates. They have put another provision called Free Maternity Programme. All Kenyans watching me now know that the Linda Mama Programme is not functional. It is the one where mothers used to get free treatment. Now in the budget, they have put Kshs2.04 The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1527704,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1527704/?format=api",
"text_counter": 108,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
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"speaker": {
"id": 170,
"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
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"content": "billion for a programme that is not functional. On what do they want to expend these Kshs2 billion? This country is so rich. If we can afford the luxury of billions just disappearing at Afya House, imagine if that money would be pumped into our schools or hospitals. We have a great country, but we must do more as leaders. If you go to the road sector, projects that should have been done by county governments worth Kshs1.011 billion have been taken to the national Government to work on rural access roads. They have allocated Kshs65 million to Kajiado County. Why can they not allow Gov. Ole Lenku of Kajiado to have this Ksh65 million and he will decide using his county assembly, on which access roads will be done? It simply means they want him to use the paltry budget that he has to fix those access roads. There will be double accounting. The people at the Ministry of Roads and Transport will say those roads were fixed at Kshs65 million. It is only Parliament which can correct this anomaly. At this time, we happen to be the parliamentarians. The Senator of Mandera, on your way from Isiolo all the way to Mandera, have you ever in your life seen a Government project of constructing bus stages? These are modern stages being constructed. You go to Kigali in Rwanda, they have constructed proper stages, but we have none. Consequently, in this budget line number 1091175200 is for construction of such stages. How much money is set aside, a sum of Kshs203 million that will never be spent and that will make some people look richer than me. You are not richer than me I am telling you. You are so poor. You will go to your graves with a big debt of Kshs203 million and I will walk to heaven with no debt of stolen money. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we cannot allow the Executive to get away with this. How can they allocate Kshs203 million to construct bus stages and yet you have never seen one in Kilifi County? I do no know whether you have seen those bus stages in Migori County. I have served this country as a doctor in Kwale, Mombasa, Kisii, Nairobi, Kirinyaga and Kakamega counties, but I have never seen bus stages being constructed. This is theft. I want to conclude by speaking to the Kshs300 million, which again has been gutted from the devolved structure of Government. They are telling us they are going to use it on enhancing community resilience and water security. Please take this Kshs300 million to Turkana or let Turkana share with Marsabit, so that they give our children their water. These are children of God. Women in Turkana County spend their entire lives looking for water. They cannot be economically productive in their families and yet you have Kshs300 million that will sit here at the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation at Maji House. People are going to share it and our children will continue scavenging for water in Lodwar, Kibish and all those places, yet the resources of the Republic of Kenya can support this. I hope colleagues will do us a favour. If you want us to continue working for you, as a Committee of Finance and Budget, then please be here when we bring you the report of our work. Otherwise, I will not be coming to your meetings at 7.30 a.m., missing breakfast with my toothless daughter. When I see her toothless mouth as I eat, I feel very nice. However, you deny me that chance because I am coming to do this work, which looks like a thankless one. With those many remarks, I second."
},
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
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"speaker": {
"id": 170,
"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
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"content": "The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
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"speaker": null,
"content": "(Question proposed)"
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. Kingi",
"speaker_title": "The Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Now, the Floor is open. Proceed, Sen. Eddy."
},
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I thank you for giving me this opportunity to also share some thoughts on this BPS for this year. I will start my comment today by looking at Chapter 15 of our Constitution. This Chapter is dedicated to commissions and independent offices. It states as follows- “248. (1) This Chapter applies to the commissions specified in clause (2) and the independent offices specified in clause (3), except to the extent that this Constitution provides otherwise.” It then goes ahead and lists all the independent commissions that we must have. Additionally, to Chapter 248 of the Kenyan Constitution, we are provoked as a country to think about the objects and authority and further on the funding of these commissions; the independent offices that we have established as a country. There is a reason for these independent institutions. Prior to 2010, it was very difficult to predict, arrest, deter and eliminate graft in the country. All the commissions are structured to be independent to the extent that you can stop graft in the country. However, this House since inception in 2013 has done disservice to Article 249 (3) of the Constitution. It states that as follow- “Parliament shall allocate adequate funds to enable each commission and independent offices to perform its function and the budget of each commission and independent offices shall be a separate vote. This means that while in the mind of our colleagues in the National Assembly the Senate is not supposed to participate in the budget-making process in terms of active allocation and strong Money Bills that come out of this House, this Article of the Constitution makes it mandatory for the Senate to indeed participate in this process. I congratulate this committee because for the first time all the commissioners were invited as partners to submit and give their eye-bird’s point of view position on the challenges they are facing in the budget-making process. I am highlting this because the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Economic Planning who used to be my party chairman, disparaged this committee by not showing up to listen to the committee’s asks. Our concerns were on the budget-making process and the BPS that is going to be a crux of what is going to inform the Finance Bill that will come in the next few coming months. It is so wrong for my former chairman of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party and the current Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Economic Planning, Hon. John Mbadi, not to pay attention to this House’s asks to contribute to the budget-making process. This is so bad. In the submissions made by the Controller of Budget (CoB), one of the biggest problems that we have been struggling with as a House that is supposed to do oversight on counties is the issue of automation of processes of requisition of money going to our counties. This is how this process works. That is why if you look at this report, the committee has recommended significantly marginal increase on the money that is being given to these commissions. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1527709,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "We have recommended about 10 per cent on average to all the other commissions. I hope commissions are listening to this House. That they must be added money to effectively make sure that there is no graft in our nation, Kenya. The two watchdog commissions, the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) and the CoB, have rightfully gained our respect from their submissions. They have made sure that they can have up to 20 per cent increment of the money that the National Treasury envisioned at what they should be given from the BPS. I will tell you why. Due to time constraints, I will use an example of lack of automation of requisitions that CoB has to deal with every single moment. We went through this exercise with the Finance and Budget Committee in Migori County. If you go and look at the kind of requisitions that are made in our counties, for instance, you will find that the CoB is given requisition with invoices for commercial entities that have done supplies or any kind of works in counties to the tunes of X amount of money. Mr. Speaker, Sir, after giving the authorization to governors as per Article 225 of the Constitution, you will find that those invoices are no longer in the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and Internet Banking (IB). If there were 100 invoices given to the CoB at the time of requisition, one invoice is given at the time of payment, consolidating all the other stakeholders who had supplied to a county to the extent that voiding has become part and parcel of our DNA for payment. Mr. Speaker, Sir, money is getting lost in counties in ways that is embarrassing, demotivating and annoying because of lack of automation in the requisition process by the CoB. What is wrong if the CoB appears this House through our committee and makes a requisition for further financing to make automation possible? I congratulate this committee for having strongly listened to all the commissioners to the extent that we have taken an active role in making sure that those commissions and independent offices have been added money in this budget-making process. I hope that the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Economic Planning will listen to our proposals in this report. He should make sure that those commissions are given what is due to them. The independent offices should be empowered through this budget-making process to get adequate resources to perform their functions. Second is the submission from the committee that I sit, the Standing Committee on Road, Transportion and Housing, that was given to this committee. Members can find that report. One of the things that we depicted is the fight that has continued to go on within the realms of Parliament and the corridors of court on the issue of Road Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF). In this report, we have said that if this report passes in this House, when the Finance Bill comes to these Houses and the issue of RMLF is not solved according to recommendations made by this committee in this report, we will not pass subsequent budgetary Bills in this House. There is a reason for that. When RMLF came about, the Government was taking about Kshs18 from it. There has been a contention time without number on Kshs10 billion that is supposed to go to counties for a very simple reason. There are county and national Government roads, which are being used by Kenyans. You cannot take money from a levy that you are The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1527710,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
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"speaker": null,
"content": "taking from Kenyans and choose to give one part of the Government to maintain those roadsand the other is denied. The problem is so endemic. Today I was dealing with a matter concerning Sang’alo to Kandui road, which is extremely important for the performance of businesses in Bungoma County. It is a national road about six kilometres. That road was given to county government to do it. It is taking a hit on the County Government of Bungoma because it needs about Kshs1.2 billion to do that road. The County Government of Bungoma has struggled and paid Kshs512 million to start that road and it has been tarmacked halfway. When you look at the portion that the national Government was supposed to do which has made that road to stall, forcing the County Government of Bungoma to start thinking about budgeting for another Kshs212 million in this year’s budget to continue with construction of that road, it is unfair. The RMLF has continued to be a battle that we are not winning. This time around, we should win it. You will remember that last year, there was another levy that was increased on the same Fund, where Kshs7 was added on motorists. That Kshs7 was to further enable RMLF to continue being strong in terms of financing maintenance of the roads. That means that today, we are taking up to Kshs25 out of Kenyans to fund RMLF. In this BPS, a sum of Kshs7 is not proposed to go and take care of roads that are supposed to be maintained. A figure of Kshs7 billion has been put into a road bond which has been floated in the capital markets. Trade and Development Bank (TDB) and other banks are already participating. The bond will help the national Government to deal with the backlog of pending bills on existing projects. Currently, national roads have a pending bill of about Kshs175 billion. Out of that Kshs175 billion, we have got projects-affected persons who are still claiming about Kshs39 billion. It means that if it is not solved, then it becomes a crisis. The solution for solving it is RMLF where Kshs7 billion has now been put into a road bond. The fundamental question we are asking is very simple. If the levy is taken on all Kenyans, why can the bond not also be divided between the national Government and the counties, so that counties that also have serious pending bills like Bungoma that I have just quoted, which has a pending bill of about Kshs212 million for the Sang’alo-Kanduyi Road. Why can they not also get a fair share of that road bond to deal with county government’s stuck roads and pending bills that are related to roads that are maintained by the counties? It is in our report. On the RMLF, the report recommends Kshs13.9 billion that must go to the counties because they deserve it. The report also recommends that we must also make sure that the road bond is shared with the counties. As I finish, I want to echo the thoughts that have been shared by my brother, Sen. (Dr.) Boni Khalwale. Before I finish, this is such an important issue, but I am realising that there are no Members in this House to discuss. We only have Members of the Committee on Finance and Budget. Mr. Speaker, Sir, under Standing Order No.1, perhaps you could rule that we are given more time to give the nation some ideas of what is going on. If there are no Members in the House yet this is a very important issue and I only have 20 minutes, but I can do justice to this particular BPS with another five more minutes, it is out of your The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1527711,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1527711/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
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"speaker": null,
"content": "discretion. I know that you have been a generous Speaker to us in this House. Perhaps you will consider that. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as I said, the issue of budgeting for national functions vis-à-vis county functions is something we must confront. Under the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution, it is very clear, like day, functions of counties and those of the national Government. This conundrum of the national Government consistently hiding county functions in the budget-making process and taking it to the national Government instead of financing the counties is why this House was formed. This is why Article 96 of the Constitution exists to protect the interests of the counties and the ideology of devolution. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to be precise and invite this House to see that Kshs29,774,229,484 is money that has been budgeted by the national Government on purely county functions. There is no excuse structurally, ideologically, financially, operationally, politically, or in whichever form you take it. Even in economic policy, there is no excuse to have this money go to the national Government. We cannot allow this. This Kshs29 billion must go to the counties. In the spirit of the cooperation agreement that President William Ruto and Rt. Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga signed recently on the idea of entrenching, promoting, empowering and making sure that devolution works, they said that there is a possibility of concurrence between Parliament and the Executive to give counties even Kshs450 billion. We are now giving them a scientific solution to make sure that this money goes to the counties. The scientific solution is this---"
}
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}