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"id": 1431852,
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"speaker_name": "Navakholo, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Emmanuel Wangwe",
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"content": "needs. The perpetrators of that subsidy program who misbehaved in terms of not delivering the items to the needy cheated on the basic human need of food. This is a very unfortunate scenario where one person or so, can get away with such a big error. I would like to single out four issues, including the observation that has been made by the Committee, that there was failure to make changes in the contract as proposed by the Office of the Attorney-General. If a Committee can overlook a decision by the Attorney-General to make various amendments to the contract, that, in itself, is a violation of the rule of law. Those people must, therefore, face the law as it is supposed to be. The second observation that caught my eye is the acquisition of money by millers. The Committee has noted that millers were put to acquire money from financial institutions to fund the subsidy programme. They were enticed to go out and look for money without looking at the issue of the interest rate. Who is going to fund the interest rates? We are not just looking at the issue of the subsidy programme, but also the financial undertone that comes along with the borrowing which is not factored in. It distorts the money market. It distorts the economy. That is as good as a destruction of a whole country’s economy. The other Committee’s observation that I want to agree with is that there are no reports of delivery of the subsidised maize flour to the last mile by the Ministry of Interior. Whatever they do must have a report. That was not somebody's pocket change. A report must come out showing where the delivery was made and who received the items. If there is no such a report, it automatically means somebody choreographed a scheme with an intention to defraud the Kenyan people. The last observation I want to rely on is that there was no surveillance report for the distribution of the milled maize flour. If we do not have information of where the maize flour was milled, where was the maize flour itself? There was no source of milling and no miller came out to own up that he actually milled the maize flour. So, who were they paying? I agree with the recommendations of my colleagues in the Committee on Agriculture and Livestock that the Ministry of Agriculture should explain why it did not adopt the proposals made by the Attorney-General on the contract. As I said earlier, that is very important. Immediately these reports are adopted, the Ministry must tell us why… That comes along with so many other issues that they have to explain. Finally, whereas the Committee has proposed that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) should look into this Report, I want to request that the Office of the Attorney- General also looks at it and gives us their own independent opinion so that they can share with us how much money was lost in the whole process and not just in terms of the milling and its distribution. Now that they went and poked into Article 223 of the Constitution, they violated the Constitution of Kenya. That was an abuse of Article 223, a very noble Article that supports any administration to pay for any needy programs that arise and have not been budgeted for. Otherwise, this Report is very good. Let all of us support it. I support the Report. Thank you."
}