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{
    "id": 1000762,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1000762/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 1410,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Homa Bay Town, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Peter Kaluma",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1565,
        "legal_name": "George Peter Opondo Kaluma",
        "slug": "george-peter-opondo-kaluma"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, we must sit as Parliament, even after this Budget, and see how we can remove those restrictions in laws, which have taken away the power given to Parliament by the Constitution on a Budget. In that law, and I am happy that in the Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, we have formed a sub-committee which I am heading, to see these laws that we can unlock so that the meaning that the people of Kenya had in Article 95 of the Constitution in saying that we budget, is really meaningful. There is a good reason for it. We are the representative of the people coming across the nation. We are the ones who know the needs of those areas. We should be bringing those needs to the table so that when we are at this stage, we are speaking to things which are going to help down there. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, if we come to those legal reforms - and I would urge the House that we take them up so that we can avoid these lamentations, which are like biblical - we will have a situation where we can rationalize the relationship between departmental committees and the Budget and Appropriations Committee. I heard the Chair in charge of the Committee in which I serve - the Departmental Committee on Administration and National Security - talk. This is the Committee under whose charge those sectors are and we understand better where accountability issues are and how the nation can be moved by the right funding to various sectors. But if we do a report and it is all thrown out… Just the other day, we passed the law on Small Claims Courts requiring that we now have small claims courts across the country. But what is the budget of the Judiciary for the construction of courts? The courts that we started building in 2013 are stuck and if you go to Homa Bay, Nairobi or North Eastern, they are all not being built. Yet, a law was rushed here, saying that we are going to have adjudicators across the country. Are they going to work under trees or where are they going to work from? That cannot work in the current legal arrangements undermining the constitutional provisions. The Departmental Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs will come and say that we want those courts to be built, but it will end there. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, as we combat COVID-19, we are being told each time that we should wash our hands using running water. I thought, therefore, that the Budget for this year would have a very big allocation for the Ministry of Water and Sanitation. I was thinking of a budget line, which was going to ensure that there is, at least, a borehole in every learning institution around us, as we wait to open schools in September. Across the country, we have areas where you are talking of running water, but they do not even have still water. If you go to Homa Bay Town Constituency, a bay means land bordering a water body. We are halfway into the lake, but we only see the water. We do not have water to wash our hands. We have a budget which has not been contextualised to the prevailing circumstances. We have allowed laws made in Parliament and not by the Constitution to take away the powers Kenyans gave us in the Constitution. Unless we amend those laws and sit to budget as representatives of the people, the Lamentations Book in the Bible will continue. It is something we need to consider. I hope by the time we consider the Supplementary Budget, we will perform our role better."
}