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{
"id": 1076232,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Bondo, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Gideon Ochanda",
"speaker": {
"id": 1264,
"legal_name": "Gideon Ochanda Ogolla",
"slug": "gideon-ochanda-ogolla"
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"content": "recommended two or three years ago, we recommend it in the following year, and again, we are recommending it this year. Something needs to be done. One major issue that we may need to look at as Parliament is exactly how we follow up on implementation. There is a big problem. Definitely, we have a Select Committee on Implementation that looks through the House’s resolutions. Apparently, a lot of details are not going into what we call departmental committee reports and the watchdog committee reports. These reports just lie there and nobody follows them up. The Select Committee on Implementation really follows other things like the normal routine resolutions of the House, but if you look through this, you will realise that there is a big problem in terms of implementation. The Public Accounts Committee recommends surcharges, execution and so many other things, but they remain at that level. Who follows up on those who are supposed to execute them? This is where there is a very big problem. This needs to be the role of the Select Committee on Implementation on one hand, in my view, but also the committees themselves. Today, we heard the cautionary opinions by the Auditor-General on the State Department of Planning and the State Department of Public Service. These are critical departments. The Department of Planning is attached to the Treasury. The Department of Public Service is running the entire public service. The two out of 14 did not go through the real details of what the Auditor- General requires. Maybe they are disappearing, they do not place papers or they do not place exactly what is required. Time ends and now the Auditor-General puts in a cautionary kind of an opinion. What is it that we are doing as a nation? What I am trying to say is that if our reports that come annually were to start with what has happened, for example, if PAC Report this year changed their routine in a manner that it starts by reporting what has happened since the last Report was tabled, it would help. The other day I was shocked by the Departmental Committee on Health that there are things they recommended that were supposed to be done in the first three months and are holding the entire country to ransom as at now, but they have not been done for three or four years. So, the Committee was also shocked as to why what they recommended is not yet implemented. We should not leave this thing to the Select Committee on Implementation alone. Oversight committees need to check through in terms of what we recommended last time and what has happened after that before we start getting into the next one. If it is a matter of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) or the Attorney-General, can they report to that particular Committee, for example, if it touches on prosecutions, what has happened? This will ensure that the reports that get into this House start by giving us information of what has happened since the last report was tabled and then we can proceed to the next. We should change the way these things are done. I think departments are taking it as a tradition because it is something that happens annually, they take it as a right. Once it passes, we forget about it and wait for the following year to make the same recommendations and nothing happens. We keep piling these reports that in the end do not impact the nation. We are becoming a big mockery to this country. Everybody points at Parliament. Definitely, we have a role in budget-making. What stops the Budget and Appropriations Committee, for example, from failing to allocate money to a department if wastages, like the ones Hon. Wandayi mentioned, are in a department? What stops a Departmental Committee from following up on such issues, so that there is a clear report in the House showing what must be in place before we go on? If an example is given in this House that payments are done, each department in this republic has internal auditors. Before the Auditor-General comes in, what do internal auditors do? The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}