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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, before I expand, allow me to state why this Motion is important, and to also read - so that hon. Members can understand - the articles that I have referred to in the Constitution and what they mean."
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"content": "Article 202(1) states that:- “Revenue raised nationally shall be shared equitably among the national and county governments.” Please note the word “equitably”."
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"content": "Also, allow me to read Article 203, particularly (g) and (h):- This is the criteria that will be used in determining equitable allocation of resources. One of the key criteria is economic disparities within and among counties and the need to remedy them. I repeat “disparities within and among counties”. The next one is: “The need for affirmative action in respect of disadvantaged areas and groups”."
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir,it is clear from these articles that we must have a criteria on how those resources will be equitably allocated within the counties and also in disadvantaged areas. To do that, we need data and information. Without data and information, it will be exceedingly difficult for the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) to determine the amount of resources which should be given to each county. The criterion that has been used by the Ministry of Planning, National Development and Vision 2030, particularly by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KBS) has been the determination of poverty levels. When we determine the poverty levels within the country, then we will be in a position to be able to equitably allocate these resources. So, the issue of how to determine our poverty levels, or living standards in different localities in this country, is very crucial. Without that information, it is going to be exceedingly difficult and there is a risk that the Commission or those who will be involved will be subjective in the allocation of resources and, therefore, they will contravene the Constitution. Apart from poverty levels or the standards of living, population is going to be very crucial. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am happy to note that we had a population census in 2009; so, the information is available and is current and, therefore, that information is going to be very crucial. There will be a need for information, particularly when you are looking at the socio- economic status of various counties. There will be need to look at various social amenities, including education status or literacy levels in various counties, so that when allocating resources, literacy will be one of the indicators of whether a county is highly advanced or not. Health care will be an issue that will have to be looked into and many other social services. So, all this information must be available before we go for devolved Government system. Otherwise, if we start the devolved Government system, hopefully in 2013, without this information, I am worried that it is going to be difficult for the Revenue Allocation Commission to decide how to allocate the resources to various counties. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, allow me to take the hon. Members briefly through how the KNBS has attempted to determine poverty levels in this country. If you may recall, earlier this year, we had a big debate in this House when new poverty levels were introduced for allocation of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) resources. You remember that there was a lot of controversy, debate and argument, with people arguing that the poverty levels assigned to their constituencies were not correct. I remember that a team of hon. Members from this House went to the extent of even going to the High Court to petition on that matter, so that those poverty levels were not be used. However,"
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"content": "38 Wednesday, 14th December, 2011(A)"
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"id": 446,
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"content": "they did not succeed. I want to highlight those poverty levels, because the documents that have all those poverty levels that are currently being used to allocate CDF resources to constituencies are here. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to demonstrate to this House that, yes, these poverty levels have some credibility; but there are so many drawbacks and flaws in them that if we were to wait--- This is the most current poverty levels report we have, which is based on a survey that was done in 2005/2006. If we do not carry out another survey before we go to the devolved Government system, then it will be almost obvious that attempts will be made to use this document. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to demonstrate, using a few examples, that there are quite a lot of draw backs in this document. Therefore, it is essential that the Government makes a very concerted effort to carry out a very well- planned integrated household budget survey, that is well co-ordinated and well controlled, so that the figures for the poverty levels that we come up with will be credible enough for everybody to accept them. This survey was undertaken in 2005/2006; basically, it was designed to provide data needed to update measures for living, notably poverty in Kenya. So, actually, if you go through this, you will see poverty levels for every constituency that was determined. It was also aimed at coming up with the consumer price index for various localities in t he country. It also had an overall goal of coming up with household consumption for the system of national accounting to come up with an integrated household consumption index. Apart from that, this report also came out with a number of other sets of data, particularly socio-economic data, including on education, health, energy, water, sanitation, credit and agriculture. So, it was quite a comprehensive survey; it was more or less like what we did in the 2009 national census. So, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will not go into the details, but I just want – if you allow me – to read just a small section in this report, so that it is very clear to all the hon. Members. This is from section 1.3.1 - Measuring Well-being. It says:-"
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"content": "“Although the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey was conducted in 2005/2006, the sample design of the survey does not give direct estimation of constituency level poverty estimates”. That is extremely important. So, as much as we are using this report to determine allocation of CDF resources, the report is very clear that it was not designed for that purpose. In fact, if hon. Members have time - actually the allocation of poverty indexes for various constituencies was determined statistically. we have a lot of equations which were used to determine this, but I would not want to go into those details of statistics and so on."
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"id": 448,
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to bring to the attention of the House the fact that this survey focused on districts and not constituencies. It focused only on 69 former districts. However, we have more than 200 districts. Secondly, the sample size of the number of households covered in each districts were too few. They were about ten households. Thirdly, more sampling effort or survey was concentrated in the urban areas rather than in the rural areas. For example, in the entire country, we had 8,610 households sampled. In towns, we had 4,820 households. So you can see it was skewed towards urban areas rather than rural areas. The households were sampled in one year. Within this"
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"content": "39 Wednesday, 14th December, 2011(A)"
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"id": 450,
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"content": "period, there were variations in price index depending on the season. That brought in a lot of errors. Fourthly, the survey focused mostly on markets. That is where most of the data was collected from. People who go to buy goods in markets do not necessarily come from the constituencies where the markets are. They could easily show the consumer price index being very high and show that the people within that locality have a high purchasing power when it is not the fact. For example, in Luanda Market in Emuhaya, people come to buy goods there from as far as Jinja in Uganda and Talime in Tanzania. So, using the market prices also had a major impact on the determination of the purchasing power of the people. Fifthly, the questionnaire was too elaborate. The common people could not understand the questions. That had a major impact on the results. I do not want to go into details because this is a more technical report. This Motion is urging the Government to allocate resources to the Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030, through the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and other independent consultants to make sure that the quality of the data collected is up to standard, so that the work can be done before we go to the devolved Governments system. I will stop there and ask Dr. Kones, who is a statistician - he has a PhD in Statistics - to second this Motion."
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