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{
"id": 1239261,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1239261/?format=api",
"text_counter": 240,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Mungatana, MGH",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "We are requesting the House to pass this Motion. I will try to explain it in a brief way, so that Members seated can understand what we are talking about. The Motion is legalistic, but also simple. The Attorney-General, on 21st November, 2022, wrote to the Clerk of the Senate and asked the Committee on Delegated Legislation to propose that we give extension to 1,764 pieces of rules and regulations, which were derived from 400 Acts of Parliament, which were due for automatic lapse or revocation on the 23rd January, 2023. In that letter, the Attorney-General attached a copy of all those regulations and asked us to help him give extension, so that those regulations can still be effective despite the fact that the automatic revocation, which was supposed to take effect in January be extended further by another year. Hon. Senators, we looked at the requests by the Attorney-General. He asked us to do an omnibus approval of these 1,764 regulations to be extended coming from 400 Acts of Parliament. That was a serious request. If some of the regulations lapsed and we revoke them, it means some parastatals which were created by force of the regulations, would cease to exist. It would mean that out of the 400 Acts of Parliament that are in force, the regulations making those Acts to be implementable would cease to function. That is a serious request. On behalf of this Senate, we expected the Attorney-General to come himself and explain to us the reason all these regulations were not extended on time. The Committee records its great disappointment that the Attorney-General did not take this matter as seriously as we thought. Instead, he sent one of the legal counsels to represent him. Mr. Samson Davis Maundu, Principal Legal Counsel, came from the Attorney- General’s Office. We tried to interrogate him on various issues and he kept asking for time to consult his principal in the office who could not attend the meeting for reasons that we were not convinced were good enough. At the end of it, the Committee said that because of the heaviness of this matter and the way Senate was taking it, we would request to re-invite the Attorney-General to the Committee. Him being the Chief Legal Advisor, he was to come and explain some of the questions that we had as a Committee, which we were not getting answers from Mr. Maundu. We requested for that meeting, but it never took place. We are convinced that the Attorney-General’s Office did not give this matter the serious attention it required. The Committee observed, especially that under the Statutory Instruments Act, 2013, in particular, Section 21(2), the person who is supposed to seek for an extension of a regulation is the Cabinet Secretary (CS) responsible. The CS responsible is supposed to seek the extension in consultation with the Committee. Unfortunately, no CS came. The Committee of the Senate observed that it was unprocedural for the Attorney-General to purport to act on behalf of all the CSs, who were seeking extension of the application of those regulations from the 400 Acts, yet they never consulted the Committee. The problem is that we were asking questions that even the Attorney-General could not answer even if he came. For example, if you are dealing with the coffee regulations"
}