Senate must bear responsibility for the chaos of county closure

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Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • During the same 24 hours, no Kenyan taxpayer will be exempted from paying tax.

In the next 24 hours, more than 24 people are likely to die across the country. The deaths may not be as a direct result of the Covid-19.  

Kenyans will die from other curable diseases or road accidents because they are unable to access timely medical attention from public health facilities. 

During the same 24 hours, no Kenyan taxpayer will be exempted from paying tax. Businesses will have to remit trading licence fees to their respective county governments. Kenyans, too, will pay Value Added Taxes and other taxes to county governments.

This skewed order of things has been brought to us by the decision of the 47 governors to shut down provision of some health services.

Among the services the governors have chosen to close are in-patient admissions in county-run hospitals. However, they have emphasised that revenue collection will run as usual. Every-one can see where the priorities of our county chief executives lie.

But that is a subject we may want to revisit in 2022, for those who will survive the shutdown.

The Council of Governors Chairman Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya on Wednesday announced their decision to scale down operations and send home most of the county workers because the counties have not received their financial allocation for the current fiscal year from the national government.

It is, the CoG argued, some three and a half months into the financial year and counties cannot continue to run on words alone. After all, the workers, hopefully including the governors, need money to survive, they must be paid to work.

It seems the taxes and other monies Kenyans pay directly to counties count for nothing. The governors owe their suffering subjects some explanation.

Kenyans know that the allocation of funds to counties has not been done. This is because the Senate has not yet passed the requisite Revenue Allocation Bill to allow the National Treasury to disburse money to the county governments.

The 74 senators, whose main mandate is to protect the interests of their respective counties at the national level, and their 20 nominated colleagues have not passed the crucial bill because they have not been able to agree on a revenue sharing formula. They have been debating about the formula 11 times without success.

The Senate has surely been a disappointment. It has been the weakest link in resolving the revenue sharing an issue that should not be a contentious issue in the first place.

It looks like the 67 senators take pleasure in engaging in long verbal discussions just to prove their oratory skills and listen to themselves without giving any plausible direction.

You would have seen how they competed each other on the floor of the House on Wednesday afternoon to get a chance to hit the governors and issue threats!

A stranger in the country would be forgiven to think Mr Oparanya and his 46 brothers and sisters have just woken and closed down the counties and the 68 county prefects didn’t know and can’t understand why.

As a country we need to sit down our senators and get them understand that as much as the Senate is a debating house, it is more than a talk show parade for competition of oratory prowess.

Unlike school debating clubs, Parliament has the grave responsibility of steering the country and debates in that House must provide time bound decisions.

Johnson Barezi, Mombasa