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{
    "id": 104638,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/104638/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 663,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Foreign Affairs",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to make a response to a few things that my very good friend, Mr. Keynan said in the process of moving his Motion. I would be quite happy if he could have restricted himself to the Motion, but he went way beyond and made what looked like personal attack on me. I do not want to take exceptions to that and I want to ask my brother, Mr. Keynan that we have come a long way to engage in civility towards our colleagues. I have never and I will never use harsh words against a colleague. Not before, not tomorrow and not any other time. Last week when my colleague was moving the Motion, he gave some startling statistics here about staffing levels in our missions. He cited about three or four missions. Even as a Minister for once, I reflected back and wondered whether I knew what was going on in my Ministry because what I knew was different. You may recall that Mr. Keynan said that in our mission in New York, we were over-staffed by--- He said that our establishment was 12 and we have 32 members of staff. This is far from the truth. In our mission in New York, our authorized establishment--- When you talk of authorized establishment it is the officers that we post from Kenya to go and work there whom we pay foreign service allowance, we pay for their families and everything. Our authorized optimum in New York is 12 members of staff, but because of pressure of work, we have 13 members of staff with one extra member of staff only. My colleague here said that we have about 28. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, he cited Washington and said we are overstaffed by almost three times. The truth is that our recommended and authorized staff establishment is 13; we have eleven, which is less by two. In London, we are authorized to have 14, but we have 12, fewer by two and there is pressure of work. What missions do is from time to time--- We have encouraged them that when they do this, they should recruit Kenyans. With this Committee, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we sat in Mombasa and the hon. Chairman of the Committee supported me to the hilt, that the days when we posted to the missions cooks, warders, drivers and attaches are over. I can bring the clips and play them to this House. We have since returned home all those excess staff members in our missions. As a result, we saved Kshs1.6 billion that was used to open new missions, including in Brazil, Ireland that we are talking about, Thailand and South Korea; we are thinking of reciprocity and opening a mission in Canada. Even the Turkey he is talking about is on our list, if this House will give us enough money, because what we saved has been spent."
}