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    "id": 127081,
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    "content": "the number of vehicles that the Ministers and other public office holders drive. I think the answer was non-committal. However, we have about 40 Ministers and close to 60 Assistant Ministers in this Government. We are talking about an Executive of about 100 Members of this House who have been appointed Ministers and Assistant Ministers. Almost half of this House is in the Executive. If you look at what it costs the country to run the bloated Government even for a day, you will find it unbelievable. The number of vehicles driven by the Ministers, Assistant Ministers and Permanent Secretaries are many. The expense is a heavy burden on the taxpayer. We are saying that last year was a necessary evil, because we had to bring this country together and, therefore, accommodate as many people as possible in terms of competing interests from different political parties. It was clearly a necessary evil. However, time has come – and we are hoping that after we pass this Bill, because we intend to pass it – for the two Principals to re-look at the issue. What was a necessary evil last year, is it a necessary evil now? Must we continue living with the bloated Cabinet and continue burdening the Kenyan taxpayer? I think it is an issue we need to look at. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Bill has wonderful suggestions on how we can trim the Cabinet from the current number to just about 24. However, proposals have already been made and I hope that the Mover is here to note what we are saying; that, we can even scale it down to 22 members. Ms. Karua and Mr. ole Metito have already made that proposal. We propose that from the list of 24 members, the two Deputies should also hold Ministries and this will bring the Cabinet to 22. We should also do away with the 24th one which is “any other”. That will also bring down the number. We propose that apart from the Ministry of Water and Irrigation being merged with the Ministry of Agriculture, which will bring the number to 20, the Ministry of East African and Regional Co-operation which is No.6--- This Ministry was created from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If we go for a lean Cabinet, we can do away with this Ministry because the Minister for Foreign Affairs deals with all foreign affairs, whether in East Africa, the rest of Africa or the whole world. So, we can bring this down to a Cabinet of 20 members. We need to be clear so that apart from the Ministers, we also have 20 Assistant Ministers. Like it has been proposed previously, so that these Assistant Ministers do not feel inferior to other Ministers, who are Assistant Ministers basically in Uganda and elsewhere, they should be called “Ministers of State” who have general duties. However, we should have 20 substantive Ministers and 20 “Ministers of State”, so that once it is defined and provided for in our laws, we cannot have a situation where anyone who comes into power can create a bloated Cabinet like the one we have now and, therefore, put a heavy burden on Kenyans. It is very important that we look at the future in terms of constitutional amendments and the kind of leadership we want in place, and which we want to provide in our Constitution. On our future, I think we have all agreed that we want devolution to be the centerpiece of the Constitutional review that we will have. If we devolve funds in the manner that we are already doing – and I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance for what he did in the Budget for the current Financial Year – to the constituency, each district becomes a constituency and the basic unit of development, then we will not have a situation where we will need to have Members of Parliament also being Cabinet Ministers."
}