A new fund set up for senators to enable them carry out their activities in the counties is quite anomalous.
The
Sh1 billion kitty is premised on the wrong assumption, that the
senators should be conducting physical activities in the counties.
Clearly, that is not the case.
The Constitution
prescribes four key functions for the Senate, by extension the senators,
among them representing and protecting the interests of the counties as
well as oversight over State officers. None of these roles is
executive.
For example, playing an oversight role does
not mean going out to the counties and inspecting development projects
or auditing what the governors and their executives are doing. Several
agencies such as the audit office exist principally to do the actual
inspection of resource use.
Thus, the oversight role of
the senators and Members of the National Assembly is to examine reports
by the various agencies and establish if public resources were put into
the correct use.
To this extent, it defies logic why a
special fund should be set up for the senators ostensibly for
performing the oversight role. It is questionable what activities or
programmes they will be doing in the name of oversight. What exactly
will the senators use the money for? How will the money be accounted
for?
So far, there is concern about multiplicity of
funds going to the grassroots under different voteheads and their impact
on the lives of the people.
These include Constituency
Development Fund and the annual allocations for the counties. All these
have clear targets, which people understand very well. Not so the
proposed senators’ fund.
In sum, the senators’ fund is amorphous and unjustifiable. Allocating public funds for such nebulous ventures is not acceptable.
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