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{
    "id": 1167534,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1167534/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 258,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ugunja, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Opiyo Wandayi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2960,
        "legal_name": "James Opiyo Wandayi",
        "slug": "james-opiyo-wandayi"
    },
    "content": "As you know, counties depend on this revenue sharing to support most of their budgetary obligations. Most of our counties do not have well-streamlined revenue streams to support or finance their budgets. They rely almost entirely on the exchequer releases as a result of the revenue sharing that this House is going to approve, if at all it agrees with this Report. Just as we have done in previous reports, the Committee has looked at the workings and operations of various state departments, independent offices, commissions and agencies. It has made several observations on the use or misuse of public resources. It has also gone a step further and made specific recommendations, in most cases calling upon relevant agencies and offices to take further action against specific offices or officers. It is our hope that the concerned offices or agencies will waste no time in taking the actions recommended by my Committee. I will simply highlight one or two cases to demonstrate that public officers and accounting officers in a number of cases are still not applying public resources in a prudent and economical manner. That will come through quite clearly. It is a running thread across the Report that we, as a country, need to rethink what further measures to put in place to ensure that any public officer or state officer entrusted with the management of the very scarce public resources does their work responsibly knowing that he or she is a trustee of the Kenyan public and that those resources put under his or her charge are not personal resources. The matter of the public land belonging to the Kenya Meteorological Department comes to mind. That land is somewhere in South C. I think it is in Industrial Area. That land was gazetted as public land and entrusted with the State Department of Kenya Meteorological Department under the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Somehow along the way, certain private persons and/or entities found themselves encroaching onto this land, alienating it for themselves and acquiring ownership documents in respect of five entities. For avoidance of doubt, I want to mention them. They are M/s Beacon Towers Limited, M/s Hilbrow Properties Limited, M/s Brentwood Traders Limited, M/s Pamba Properties Limited, and M/s Varun Industrial Credit Limited. These five entities alienated for themselves five parcels of land whose current market value is estimated at least Kshs10 billion. They went ahead and started developing these parcels of land but luckily – I must commend the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EAC) in this particular instance – the EACC took up the matter and went to the High Court and sought to have the title deeds for the properties revoked. It is really fulfilling that the court went ahead, upon careful examination of the matter, and revoked the titles, reverting back these parcels of land to the public. However, one interesting thing is that even upon the revocation of these titles by the High Court, no further action has been taken to prefer criminal charges against the characters or faces behind these companies. Therefore, the Committee, in its recommendation, suggests that the DCI takes up this matter and within three months of the adoption of this Report, undertakes thorough investigations with a view to determining culpability on the part of the public officers who were involved in these transactions. Now that the court has established that the titles were acquired irregularly, illegally and unlawfully, it is incumbent upon the law enforcement agencies to establish criminal culpability and take these characters to court, charge them accordingly and hopefully secure a conviction. That would act as a serious deterrence to other persons who might want to do a similar thing in future. The second issue I want to highlight a little bit is the matter of land compensation being undertaken on behalf of acquiring entities by the National Land Commission (NLC). This process has in the past been thoroughly abused even though I must commend the current administration of NLC. It has really improved things under the current chairman and the chief executive. Previously, land compensation was an avenue for public funds to be siphoned out. A lot of money has been 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."
}