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{
"id": 1566382,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566382/?format=api",
"text_counter": 135,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "We predicted very well, because at that particular time because I was a member of the Committee on Finance and Budget, that there will come a time where we will not be able to meet our financial obligations because of that kind of unchecked borrowing. We are now in that space where we are struggling to pay debt and, therefore, we are told we must tighten our belts. I agree tighten our belts we will, but you cannot begin tightening your belts from those that consumed the least, which is devolution. If it is tightening our belts, then let us see that action commensurate with regards to the budget that is left with the national Government. That is why Senators have spoken and have said that Kshs450 billion is a minimum and that we are very clear about. Our Committee on Finance and Budget has proposed Kshs465 billion which is even better. This is because, our colleagues in the National Assembly have told us that we have no business looking into the budget of the national Government. We have said; fine, we do not want to know what the details entail, but at least, give us Kshs465 billion we take back to the 47 devolved units and then you find the money to run your operations in the rest of the departments and state organs. Mr. Speaker, Sir, if someone does not stand up for devolution, it will be killed. I wish Sen. Moses Kajwang’ was here because he walked out as I was rising to speak to maybe to attend to something. The other day I said that we are concerned by the audit reports that continue to be brought to this House. If you can recall, before the end of last session, we hurriedly passed resolutions of almost all the 47 county governments’ audit reports because of an imposition of a timeline by the courts. However, we said we shall find time to revisit and check on the operations of our specific county governments. That exercise needs to happen and happen now. I know that there are members of the County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) who are in the House. I request them, with a lot of humility, to lead the exercise because that is ordinarily their work. That is the work of this Committee. This House has charged them with the responsibility of ensuring that once we have done the battle and have brought the goods home, they are used prudently for the improvement of the welfare of our citizens. Mr. Speaker, Sir, if you recall that particular debate on that afternoon which I also remember because I made a contribution just like my colleague Senators, we pointed out that there were certain glaring maladministration issues that were distinctively clear in almost all the 47 county governments without fail. There was the issue of minimal disposition of resources, hardly 20 per cent. Many counties are using only 15 to 22 per cent at the maximum, towards the actual development expenditure. That means close to 80 per cent is going to recurrent expenditure. That is not tenable. That cannot be viable. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like us to reflect on the speech made by Prime Minister Raila this morning in this House about the journey of devolution and why we, as a Senate, must always stand and defend. It must be recalled that on those reports we considered here as well, we were reminded that 35 out of the 47 county governments, if I"
},
{
"id": 1566383,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566383/?format=api",
"text_counter": 136,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"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."
},
{
"id": 1566384,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566384/?format=api",
"text_counter": 137,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "am not wrong, were spending more than half the resources that we devolved on paying salaries. Surely, why should you want to be called a governor? Your name should be turned to paymaster general. You are just a salaries payment officer if you are disposing more than half of the shareable revenue that is due to your county to pay salaries alone. I have said that this business of telling us that in 2013, you inherited members of staff from the defunct municipal councils and you have to find ways of paying them; it is almost 15 years since that exercise happened. What is your contingency plan? I would like to tell the Members here that if we wait for our county governors to file the plan on the route to achieving the statutory 35 per cent spent on recurrent expenditure, it will never happen. We are the ones who passed Regulation 25 of the PFM Act on how much each county is supposed to spend. We are the ones who are charged with the mandate of enforcing it. I, therefore, urge the hon. Members, especially the Members of the Committee on Finance and Budget who brought us this wonderful report to lead us in an exercise where we have a conversation, sit down and pass regulations. This is so that, if a county government does not file a plan through which they head and yet, prudent use of public resources is not an event. It is a process. There is a way through which you grow your numbers. If today you are at 47 per cent because if I recall, Sen. Faki, that is the number that Mombasa County was at. Governor Abdulswamad must file before this House the plan that they have for the next three, four, five or even six years as a county government to move towards the attainment of the statutory 35 per cent. However, if this year is at 47 per cent, the next year at 48 per cent then the year after, it becomes 50 per cent, even us, as a House, we are complicit in the maladministration that is going on in our counties. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we have been reminded this afternoon that there are many initiatives that keep on popping up, collaborations between county governments and the national Government. First of all, there were County Aggregation and Industrial Parks (CAIPs). We should go and check the plans being done by the county governments. You know, CAIP was conceptualized in Nairobi, and that is why we must move away from these plans that are conceptualized in the well air-conditioned rooms here in Nairobi, but have no meaning or connection whatsoever with the challenges that people face in the village. If the ‘youth leader’, Sen. (Dr.) Oburu, goes to his county today, he should ask himself the plan being made to make sure that the CAIP being built in his county will be of service to the people of Siaya. Chances are, there is absolutely nothing. If he asks the governor, he will rightfully say that he was not consulted. He was just told to give a matching fund of Kshs250 million. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we too cannot plead innocence because we participated in passing a Division of Revenue that ensured that each county contributed Kshs250 million. With the exception of Nairobi, the same, can be said about the community health promoters. Surely, if the only thing they earn is a salary, why does someone need to keep"
},
{
"id": 1566385,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566385/?format=api",
"text_counter": 138,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"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."
},
{
"id": 1566386,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566386/?format=api",
"text_counter": 139,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "that money at the Ministry of Health here at Afya House instead of sending all that money to the counties? We can calculate and we know what a stipend is. What is this obsession we have in our country of holding on to resources that we do not need, even people's salaries? At least we know that if Sen. Eddy is looking for a kickback, there are no kickbacks in people’s salaries, at least sign that out. . Mr. Speaker, Sir, good people, I want to ask of us, that as we consider the Division of Revenue Bill (National Assembly Bills No.10 of 2025), let us passionately fight and stand up for devolution because this is the last battalion of defence. If you let this country down, there is no likelihood whatsoever that anyone will ever remember that there was need. We understand that there are challenges, Sen. Omogeni. Devolution is not as popular as the National Development Constituencies Development Fund (ND-CDF). That is a fact. It is not rocket science and it is for obvious reasons. The ND-CDF is managed separately. Even us we must learn to appreciate what made the ND-CDF to be as popular as it is, is the fact that they do not utilize the level of human resource that we utilize in our counties. That is why 98 per cent of that Fund goes to actual budgetary programmes, things that are tangible and people can see, including schools and things that ordinary citizens would wish to identify with. Mr. Speaker, Sir, when you are a county government and 50 per cent of the Kshs10 billion you receive is paying 3,000 or 4,000 people in a county of a million people, people will say; wrap these things up, we do not want them. Therefore, part of defending devolution is to ensure that we make it work in the way that it was designed. The way that it was designed is to make sure that people feel resources getting into their pockets. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I urge my colleagues that as we begin this conversation and the re-awakening that we have, we must all stand together and appreciate that there will be challenges and that we may not achieve that which we set out to achieve immediately or at the time of first asking. However, as a House, we must make a firm decision that is in the best interest of the country. Yesterday or two days ago, I watched something from the former Budget and Appropriations Committee Chair of the National Assembly. He was addressing himself to a number of issues. I began to appreciate the challenges that we have. There is something the late President Mwai Kibaki used to say about people being suddenly very clever. I saw the gentleman trying to tell us that we should not borrow. Even the budget that we are using in this financial year; it is that gentleman who passed it on the Floor of the National Assembly, with a fiscal deficit of almost 5 per cent. How is it that suddenly he has discovered that borrowing is bad? This House has been pushing and insisting--- Mr. Speaker, Sir, our BSP report for the last 10 years, the Senate has always maintained that we do not have a fiscal deficit of above 3.3 per cent, including the report that we passed here. As Senate, we have been very clear on these things. Our colleagues who are in the National Assembly cannot be the ones lecturing the country at this particular time. They cannot be telling us, “oh, you do not need to do this"
},
{
"id": 1566387,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566387/?format=api",
"text_counter": 140,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"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."
},
{
"id": 1566388,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566388/?format=api",
"text_counter": 141,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "and we have borrowed this much.” We borrowed because they passed a budget that has a deficit of close to Kshs1 trillion and we do not have any other way of meeting the budget. We want to have this conversation, but it cannot be because someone is no longer wanted by his colleagues. They cannot suddenly want to talk down on everybody and tell us, “oh, this and that is not right.” We are now being told that NSSF should not do this or the other. I find that to be extremely ignorant. We all know that the Tanzanian NSSF is putting up an investment close to Kshs40 billion in Nairobi. That investment is one kilometre from where we are gathered. Pension funds, world all over, are looking for opportunities to invest. The problem with us, as a country, is that we think that NSSF should only build houses and sell to citizens. No wonder our pension scheme has never grown. A country with a smaller economy like Uganda has a bigger pension fund than ours because of their innovativeness. I saw a gentleman telling us, “oh, do not build roads and do not do this or the other.” Do such people know that the expressway was built by savings of pensioners in China? Those pensioners are now earning from us when we use the expressway yet some people are telling us that our own cannot invest when opportunities come. They should spare us from those kind of lectures. We have to be bold in our decision making, honest and truthful to the country as we have conversations on what we can do about our economy. The last thing I want to address is the securitization of roads. I want to challenge the Members of this House. If you go to the Ministry of Roads and Transport today, you will get a gentleman, the Cabinet Secretary, Davis Chirchir, who will show you the investment that has been done by the three road agencies in this country. He can show you that on his dashboard. I will actually ask that the document be tabled in Parliament one day."
},
{
"id": 1566389,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566389/?format=api",
"text_counter": 142,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "I am saying this because I heard the MP for Kiharu Constituency, the former Chairperson of the Committee on Budget, say that we should not securitize roads levy for us to build roads in other parts of the country. He is saying that yet in the last financial year alone, he sent Kshs14 billion to one constituency: his own constituency. My own county hardly---"
},
{
"id": 1566390,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566390/?format=api",
"text_counter": 143,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "We have to be honest with each other on the conversation about repayments of loans. When I tell my people of Kericho County that they cannot have sufficient development because we are repaying loans, they always ask me the whereabouts of the loans that I am talking about. That is because they cannot see it. One day, we will get to a point where we will have to say, “tabulate what is in your county and pay.” With that, we will be able to see the truth."
},
{
"id": 1566391,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1566391/?format=api",
"text_counter": 144,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, hypocrisy must end in this country. I love the broad-based Government because we agreed to be honest, end the politics of hypocrisy and politics of blackmail. That is what I saw that young man trying to pursue. One cannot put Kshs14 billion in his constituency, then come and tell the rest of us who are dealing with bad and poor roads that we cannot look for money to build roads for our people."
}
]
}