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{
    "id": 1076236,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1076236/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 370,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tigania West, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mutunga",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13495,
        "legal_name": "John Kanyuithia Mutunga",
        "slug": "john-kanyuithia-mutunga"
    },
    "content": "exactly what happened and the actions that were taken. We should take it as our business to look at this Report and find out what happened and what has been done. Make it a priority in terms of reallocating resources this year and the coming years. We can be a House that is basically a rubber- stamping institution. Coming back to the Budget, every State department receives budget ceilings from the Treasury. Whether the MDA is important or not - although I believe most of them are - there is no deep scrutiny on what priority institutions are. When you look at the agriculture sector, which is the mainstay of this economy, according to the available information, it is No.11 or 12 in terms of priority areas in view of the budget. One wonders because this is the sector with most of the people and at the end of the day earns Kenya so much foreign exchange. It is the sector that employs most of the people. It is the sector that is required to roll out industrialisation. It is, indeed, the sector that is supposed to support a majority of the people. Every priority should target this particular sector. But when it comes to budgeting prioritisation, very little money is allocated to the sector. If that is the case, is our budgeting process really genuine? Who actually does the budgeting? In the Constitution and the laws of Kenya, Parliament is supposed to make the budget, but what does this Parliament actually do? How much of the budget proposals given under the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) can we alter? How much prioritisation can we do as a Parliament? How much logic can we put into this process? Very little, if anything. So, we need to ask ourselves: are we serving Kenyans the way they should be served? When it comes to payment of pending bills, there are cases where money is available to pay pending bills. The money is withdrawn from the Ministry or State department to Treasury and then Treasury demands that the State department or Ministry or semi-autonomous agency to, again, look for money from within to pay that bill. What are you supposed to do? I have in mind a case in the agriculture sector where there was some money from strategic food reserve. The money was taken by Treasury and then it demanded that the Ministry should create money from the institutions in the agriculture sector. That ended up stressing the sector even a lot more and yet the sector is underfunded to the tune of around 40 per cent. This Report highlights a lot of issues that we need to consider as oversight committees and as a House. We need to look into those issues so that we move in the right direction. Coming back to the National Land Commission, there are many parcels of land in this country that are supposed to be public land. The greater majority of the parcels do not have land ownership certificates. I refer specifically to my constituency, where there are more than 80 parcels of government land without title deeds. They are not even properly known. Some of them are being grabbed left, right and centre. We encourage the act of grabbing public land if the NLC does not do its work the way it is supposed to. And it is only the NLC which is not doing its work the way it is supposed to be done. Many government institutions do not do their work. What do we do as a Parliament, therefore, to arouse consciousness of these institutions to do their work the way they are supposed to do it? That question remains and we need to ask it of ourselves every time. When it comes to institutions that misuse government funds, misuse of government funds is rampant. Indeed, to be honest corruption in this country is budgeted for, because in the estimation of what is supposed to be done corruption is incorporated. In the processes of what happens, corruption is incorporated. What happens in this country is that there is a lot more stealing than actual doing of work as it is supposed to be done. So, what do we do as Parliament? Maybe we need to ask ourselves whether we need to go on a retreat to qualify some of these things and see what we can do about them. 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."
}