{"count":1608389,"next":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=138708","previous":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=138706","results":[{"id":1403481,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403481/?format=json","text_counter":128,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Abass","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":13587,"legal_name":"Abass Sheikh Mohamed","slug":"abass-sheikh"},"content":"Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the issue is where the money delays. In that case, according to the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act, the first charge of every financial year must be paid to all monies that are pending. What is happening is negligence on the side of the governors. When a new governor comes in, they make their own commitments, and then keep the previous bills aside, which is not acceptable in this country. We have many oversight institutions in this country. We have the Director of Criminal Investigation (DCI), Parliament and so many institutions in place. However, unfortunately, children are suffering. People are not able to even take their children to school because they have spent the money. They applied for a contract, underwent all the process and were awarded. They spent their own money to pay these contractors, suppliers, hardware persons, the"},{"id":1403482,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403482/?format=json","text_counter":129,"type":"scene","speaker_name":"","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"changarawe"},{"id":1403483,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403483/?format=json","text_counter":130,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Abass","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":13587,"legal_name":"Abass Sheikh Mohamed","slug":"abass-sheikh"},"content":"people and the people who supply the cement. All these people are now stranded. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are huge pending bills. We want this House to help and work with the CoB so that at least this money is paid to the people with pending bills. Otherwise, as it is, there are people who have gone into depression, are crazy and hungry and whose children are not going to school. This is a disaster. We have no reason as to why we should have pending bill. There is no justification for pending bills. In my county, we had a sitting with the governor, suppliers and all the contractors. There was an agreement that we should pay the money. However, that does not happen because the budget is limited. However, we are still trying to negotiate with the suppliers to see how best we can pay the money. One other thing we have discovered is that many of the contracts awarded and claims made, cannot be verified. There are no documentations. Some of them are missing and even fictitious. So, it becomes difficult for us to solve this problem. As the Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations, I am ashamed. Every time I go to a county, the contractors come to me and say, the Senate is not working nor giving us support. It is high time this Senate woke up and supported the public so that people can get their money. I suggest we stop all the monies for the counties until the pending bills are paid. Otherwise, as it is, people are running bankrupt and robbed in the country. If the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has failed, or they are overwhelmed because of the job they are doing, then we can use other institutions like the DCI to take over these things and come up with a list of the criminals who are stealing public money. So far, we have only seen only one governor that has been taken to court and charged, yet money is looted on a daily basis. When the Auditor-General gives his report, he says there is money that has not been accounted for, but no action has been taken. It is now time for this House, since we are responsible for oversighting the counties, to woke up and supported the institutions that are doing the oversight, like the EACC, DCIs and all others, so that this menace of corruption can to come to an end. 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":1403484,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403484/?format=json","text_counter":131,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Abass","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":13587,"legal_name":"Abass Sheikh Mohamed","slug":"abass-sheikh"},"content":"Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I beg to support."},{"id":1403485,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403485/?format=json","text_counter":132,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Kathuri","speaker_title":"The Deputy Speaker","speaker":{"id":13590,"legal_name":"Murungi Kathuri","slug":"murungi-kathuri"},"content":" Thank you, Sen. Abass. Next is the Deputy Minority Whip, Sen. Sifuna. Sen. Sifuna seems not to be aware of his title because---"},{"id":1403486,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403486/?format=json","text_counter":133,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Sifuna","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":13599,"legal_name":"Sifuna Edwin Watenya","slug":"sifuna-edwin-watenya"},"content":"Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, before you get to the end of that statement, there is no way of me knowing you are talking about me, when you start by Deputy Minority. It could be Leader or Whip. So, until I heard the last word in your statement, I did not know that you were speaking about me. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am speaking to this House on a very difficult day for the people of Nairobi. As I speak, many of our people are marooned in their homes. I have seen videos and photos of people on rooftops. Some homes and roads have been swept away. As I speak, footbridges in places like Kamukunji, those connecting Kamukunji to Makadara and Embakasi West, have all been swept away because of the rains that are going on. We have a humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Mathare Valley, especially at the hospital and Utalii wards. At this particular point in time, we want to acknowledge that the Nairobi City County Government is overwhelmed. We urge the national Government together with all the national emergency services to be mobilized in order to save lives in many areas of the City. There is a connection between what is happening now and the Motion that is before this House on pending bills. One of the things that break my heart is that every time we discuss problems in counties, Nairobi City County is always at the top of the list in terms of being the worst. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you can remember, just a few weeks ago, we were discussing the question of pending remittances to pension funds, including Local Authorities Pension Fund (LAPFUND) and Local Authorities Provident Trust (LAPTRUST). Three quarters of the money, which was about Kshs48 out of over Kshs60 billion that was owed to the funds, was by Nairobi City County which had the bulk of those unremitted funds. Just recently, there was a report on the number of teenage pregnancies across the country. Again, it did not surprise me that we were number one on that list. Any time there is a problem across the country and there is ranking, we are always at the top of the worst possible lists. It is not another surprise that as we discuss pending bills, out of Kshs160 billion owed by 47 counties, Nairobi City County has Kshs107 billion. I thank the Senator for Narok for this Motion because it is meant to save the people of Nairobi City County. The breakdown of Ksh107 billion pending bills contains the following. There is the report of the Auditor-General for the year ending June, 2023. There is an analysis of pending bills which we are speaking about. That is Annexure 2 of the Auditor-General’s report. First, there is a lot that is made about Kshs20 billion that is owed to lawyers in Nairobi City County. Whereas many things have been said about it, we would want there to be an audit process where all these bills are taken through. There was an attempt by the government of Governor Sakaja when they came in. They brought in taskforce to check whether, indeed, all those bills are payable. I know it was chaired by Senior Counsel Kamotho Waiganjo. There was an intervention by the 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":1403487,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403487/?format=json","text_counter":134,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Sifuna","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":13599,"legal_name":"Sifuna Edwin Watenya","slug":"sifuna-edwin-watenya"},"content":"High Court sitting in Kitale that declared all those processes to be extra-legal because most of these committees were disbanded without ever handing in their final reports to tell us whether those bills are payable or not. I want to speak as the Senator for Nairobi City County. Sometimes lawyers are all lumped together and many claim that most of these legal bills are fictitious. However, there is a process in the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) to ascertain what is payable and what is not. There are many good young lawyers who have done work for Nairobi City County Government. However, they have not been paid at the expense of a few rogue lawyers, especially senior people in the profession who raise ridiculous fee notes for work which is not commensurate to that payment. We need to isolate those cases where we believe work was genuinely done in order to process those payments. In the same OAG’s report, we have a list of stalled development projects in the county. We have over 12 stalled health projects. That includes construction of health facilities at all levels of the healthcare system, which amounts to about Kshs1.4 billion in pending bills. I have given examples on this Floor of construction works that have stalled at our Level 5 Hospitals. If you go to Mbagathi Hospital, there is a stalled construction project. The contractor abandoned site because of non-payment of bills amounting to Kshs40 million. At Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital and Mutuini Sub-District Hospital in Dagoretti South, the story is also the same. If you go to Pumwani Maternity Hospital, the premier facility for delivery of children in this country, the situation is the same. Yesterday I heard the Cabinet Secretary for Health saying that the monies that were owed by the national Government to these facilities under Linda Mama Programme and the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) had been paid. She told us to check the accounts today. However, as of yesterday when she had finished speaking, I spoke to the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of these facilities and that money has not been seen. I am also going to check with them today to see whether these amounts have been paid because we need these projects to be completed. One of the conversations that has been going on with the current flooding in the country and Nairobi City County in particular, is the question of garbage. We have a big problem. Garbage has become a serious menace and it is contributing to the situation of flooding. Most of the garbage that remains uncollected in many areas end up in our drainages and people’s homes flood. For example, we had a collection centre that was opened at Umoja Innercore. That garbage was not meant to stay there. It was supposed to be collected at Innercore and taken to Dandora Dumping Site. Since September, 2023, the contractors abandoned their work for non-payment and the garbage at Innercore in Umoja has now reached the power lines. That is how high up it has been stacked. We have illegal dumping sites at places like Likoni Road. If you speak to business people who operate in that area behind Karatasi Brands, they will tell you that there is an illegal dumping site that was opened behind Enterprise Road. All of those business from Enterprise Road coming all the way up to Road C and B are flooded. People are counting 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":1403488,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403488/?format=json","text_counter":135,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Sifuna","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":13599,"legal_name":"Sifuna Edwin Watenya","slug":"sifuna-edwin-watenya"},"content":"serious loses because of non-collection of garbage and dumping of soil on the riverbed in that particular area of Ngong River. I had a conversation with a young contractor who had come to my office. He had been contracted to collect garbage. After receiving the contract, he went to the suppliers of machinery, that is backhoe loaders and trucks and got a loan to finance the project thinking that he would make some money and pay for the equipment. By the time the guy was seeing payment, he had to abandon work and his machines were repossessed by the financiers.They were auctioned at a lesser value than he bought them. He was also required to pay for the difference in value of what he took and what they fetched in the market at the auction. We have this phenomenon where if you go for payments in the county governments and do not know somebody to push it for you, then nothing is going to be done. The young man was in tears. If you have that conversation, allegations are that you cannot be paid a pending bill until you agree to part with 50 per cent of the payment. These are not stories. That is the life of many of the contractors that are in our country particularly in our county. The Motion that has been brought by the Senator for Narok is timely. He has made some recommendations here. The first one is that the Senate recommends that all county governments pay verified pending bills amounting to less than Kshs1 billion by the end of this financial year and those above Kshs1 billion by the end of Financial Year 2024/2025. When I hear my counterpart from Nyeri say that they have no pending bills then our friends from Baringo want to impeach their governor because of pending bills of Kshs115 million, I wonder which world is this that Nairobi City County cannot live in. We can also be at zero pending bills. I support the recommendation. In fact, I have been an advocate of ring-fencing money for pending bills. As you have heard, at the rate we are moving, if Nairobi City County gets Kshs20 billion every year in equitable revenue, it will take us five years doing nothing, but paying pending bills. It will take five years’ allocation to get to Kshs100 billion in order to clear our pending bills. I agree with the recommendation here, that county governments must prioritize payment of pending bills. If those bills were being paid, garbage collectors would be working. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I forgot to tell you that if you look at the report of the Auditor-General, for the year ending June, 2023, the number of stalled road projects which are under constructions, including roads and Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) facilities, are over 50. Some of them include works that would have made the situation with flooding a bit better than it is right now. We have stalled projects with sports facilities as well amounting to Kshs64 million. These are pending bills owed to people who are supposed to be completing construction of sports stadia in Nairobi. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I, therefore, agree with the proposal that county governments must prioritise payment of pending bills as a first charge on the County Revenue Fund (CRF). However, we do not understand why this is not being done even as it is because that is the law. The law is that we pay our debts first before we do anything 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":1403489,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403489/?format=json","text_counter":136,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Sifuna","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":13599,"legal_name":"Sifuna Edwin Watenya","slug":"sifuna-edwin-watenya"},"content":"else. Why is the CoB allowing county governments to continually receive money, when we know it is not going to the payment of these pending bills as a first charge on this CRF as provided for in the law? I want to make another proposal. This is something that I am sure Sen. Olekina agrees with. There is actually no point for any county government to begin construction or new projects when we have stalled projects. If you go to Joseph Kang’ethe Grounds in Woodley, there is a social hall that was started by Governor Kidero in 2013. Up to today, from 2013, even though we have had subsequent county governments, none has seen it fit to allocate any resources for the completion of that social hall. Why would a governor upon election, not prioritise completion of projects and then, come up with new projects that are going to again get us into this rut that we are in? For instance, I have advised my county governor that yes, he had this plan to subdivide Nairobi into four boroughs so that, there can be better management of the City. However, I have told him that he does not need to build new borough offices. I am sure he understands that, in fact, when we have ward offices for the counties, there is no need for us to build any new offices and yet, we have stalled projects in the health and other critical sectors. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is a proposal that county governments shall only pay pending bills contained in their respective procurement plans, pursuant to regulation 50(2) and (3) of the Public Finance Management County Government Regulations. This is one of the most abused areas. That county governments will request for funds and give lists to the CoB stating the bills they are going to pay. Then when the money is released to them, they do what the Senator of Taita Taveta was alluding to, the voiding of transactions so that they can then preferentially pay those who they have struck deals with in order to receive something as kickbacks. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am a strong supporter. In fact, if today you tell me that we should ring-fence all the money that comes to Nairobi City County Government. We start paying off suppliers and contractors who are working on our drainages and collect our garbage, I do not think anybody in Nairobi City Nairobi will object. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is a meeting where I had been invited by the Office of the Deputy President today to discuss this thing of the Nairobi rivers. Since I believe in the relationship between the national and county governments being kosher, I thought that it was a misplaced forum for us to discuss matters that are completely devolved. We have thoughts on how we can improve Nairobi. Those of you who have travelled across the world to places such as Europe, will see that their rivers are paved at- --"},{"id":1403490,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1403490/?format=json","text_counter":137,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Kathuri","speaker_title":"The Deputy Speaker","speaker":{"id":13590,"legal_name":"Murungi Kathuri","slug":"murungi-kathuri"},"content":" Next is Sen. Chute."}]}