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{
    "id": 1218889,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1218889/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 32,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "that were made in this financial year. Therefore, if we were to wait until June, for the office of the Auditor-General to carry out an audit or for the Public Accounts Committee to ask the Auditor-General to carry out a special audit, because they can do that… I am not aware whether Hon. John Mbadi has requested the Office of the Auditor-General to carry out a special audit report on the payments. I hear him say he has, which is good. By the time the Auditor-General concludes her report and it becomes a matter to be investigated, then that may take some time. We are a House that should be addressing issues that are of concern to the Kenyan people. Already the Public Petitions Committee has allowed Kenyans to get information as was availed to Kenyans yesterday by Ms Margaret Nyakang’o, the Controller of Budget. It is important for Kenyans to know so that when many of us assert that there are people in the last regime who were on a looting spree, we are often told not to say that those people were stealing, rather, we do something about it. What needs to be done is what the Public Petitions Committee is doing. It is what Hon. John Mbadi, through his Public Accounts Committee, will later do. As you may be aware Hon. Speaker, I had a discussion with the Chairperson of the Departmental Committee on Communication, Information and Innovation, Hon. John Kiarie. They are already working towards having a joint committee to look at the policy issues and other issues that led to the payments, especially of the Ksh6.1 billion that was looted on the pretext that we were buying back Government shareholding of Telkom Kenya. I just want to caution my good friend, Hon. John Mbadi, without imputing any improper motive for his raising the issue now, that we must be cautious not to be seen to be curtailing the work of the Public Accounts Committee, especially after what was disclosed and made public yesterday. We must encourage other public officers that they have the protection of this House and its committees to avail information and furnish Members of this House and by extension members of the public with all details of the theft and looting that was carried out in the wee hours of the last regime. When you heard the Deputy President the other day assert that money was being ferried to people’s homes using helicopters, Kenyans imagined this was fiction. It is not. No wonder the desperation that was there to interfere with the elections and the election results. Maybe that is also the other reason why you see a belated attempt to try and intimidate the Government to bring back some of those subsidies that were utilised to loot from the Kenyan people. These people were fed by the fuel subsidy, Telkom Kenya, and maize subsidy. So, we must forgive them because you can never satisfy everybody’s greed, but as a House, we must stand and allow all our committees to work in line. Hon. John Mbadi is a seasoned legislator. He knows our Standing Orders have the boundaries of where the Public Petitions Committee will get to and where the Public Accounts Committee will pick up from and where the Departmental Committees will pick up from and the matters with which the departmental committees can inquire about. Hon. Speaker, as you consider this, I want to beg that the issue that has been raised by Hon. John Mbadi… Let us be cautious not to be seen to be curtailing the relay and disclosure of critical information to the public. It is important that Kenyans get to know how their country was looted so that we can stop future regimes from stealing from Kenyans. I said yesterday as I was contributing on the issue of extrajudicial killings that if we form a habit of burying our heads in the sand and burying our history by saying that we should forget what was done yesterday and move on, we will get into the cycle of people stealing and impunity being entrenched in our governance structures. I am sure Hon. John Mbadi does not want us to take that direction. I have confidence that when the Auditor-General finishes her special audit, Hon. John Mbadi will also table a report to tell us how that money was looted and include an audit trail. When I said that the Ksh6.1 billion ended up in people's personal accounts in the Cayman Islands, I knew what I was speaking about and I assured the country and the House that when time comes, we shall divulge all this information and we expect all 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."
}