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{
    "id": 1276947,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1276947/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 253,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nominated, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Irene Mayaka",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Having said that, I proceed to support this Report. A lot has been said about the chairperson of the Committee - he is a first-term Member who has proved very competent. I would also like to inform this House that I have known Hon. Jack for over 20 years. Both of us have been under the tutelage of a very competent politician in this country; the Rt. Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga. So, it is no surprise that he is as competent as he is. He comes from a very good school of political knowledge and also a school that tells you that you must always be accountable to your people. There are recommendations that the Committee has made. In this country, we have a body called the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) that oversees lawyers. There is also a body that oversees doctors. For us accountants and certified public secretaries, we have the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK) and the Institute of Certified Secretaries (ICS). These are the bodies that ideally are meant to oversee and ensure that accountants in place are doing their work. One thing I wish to know is whether the accountants who are not doing their job well are registered members of ICPAK. Two, are they paying for continuous training? One of the recommendations says that the Government should build the capacity of these people, but I know the Government does not have the capability of training and re-training accountants. This should be done by the body that oversees them. Therefore, I just want to encourage the Committee that even as they make a recommendation that they need to go for continuous training, they should also ensure that they are guided and are registered as members of the bodies that oversee accountants in this country. Secondly, accounting is a very sensitive discipline. An accountant oversees and checks if there are any spill overs and any embezzlement being done in institutions. Those institutions need serious committees. These are the committees that oversee education, especially higher education in our country. How do we know that there is no public embezzlement of funds? How do we know there are no gaps in terms of institutional management when we already have people who it is claimed are not competent in what they do? We have been told by the Committee that Section 8 of the PFM Act is not being followed. This is an extremely serious offence. It is like saying that an advocate who goes to court to testify or to support a matter is not following the regulations in the law. Therefore, they should be disbarred when they do not do that. It is a serious offence. I hope the punitive measures that the Committee is proposing will serve as a lesson. The measures ought to be a very strong message to anyone who tries to go against them. I also like the fact that they are recommending that only projects that have guaranteed funding should ideally be funded. We do not need to have a situation where we are having too many stalled projects because of no funding, or in other situations funding has been provided, but because it has not been accounted for properly, we do not know where the money has gone. Right now, we have situations even in county governments where there are many pending bills for roads, but those roads are not even there. So, people are claiming money for things they have not done. So, I just want the Committee to go further and check which projects have stalled and whether they were allocated money. The last issue is on gender, ethnicity and regional balance. Hon. Mboni, my senior, alluded to the matter. It is sad that in this country we have a whole sector, the energy sector, that can conduct its board meetings in one language because we have every person leading that particular sector coming from one community. We have had situations in the last nine months - and I want to be frank about this - where we are having employment opportunities, including those of principal secretaries going to one community. Hon. Temporary Speaker, this is an issue that we have to speak about."
}