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{
    "id": 1443579,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1443579/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 168,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "When we went to Kitui County, I recall quite fondly our interactions with various members of the public. I always quote the case of our Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights. I do not know if Sen. Faki was part of that Committee. They visited Kitui Prisons and during that interactive session, they were able to unlock a stalemate between members of the public and the Prisons Department, That is why people are up in arms against how we operated as a country. We had close to 200 prisoners or remandees who were being kept inside police cells, costing the Government more than the fines that they were supposed to pay for them to be released. Some had fines of Kshs3,000 or Kshs5,000. It costs approximately Kshs500 per day to accommodate a remandee in our prisons. If you keep that fellow for more than 10 days, what exactly are you saying? At the end of the day, when a fine is charged, as a Government, you end up incurring more than what they were supposed to have paid. That stalemate was resolved by our Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights during the visit to Kitui Prisons. They gave a resolution of the House and that matter was resolved. The only failure, which Sen. Faki must bear responsibility as a senior legislator and advocate of the High Court, is that since then, as a Senate, we have not proposed any legislation to make sure that such cases that are now replicated across all our prisons, are done away with. That is part of the challenge that we are experiencing in the country; a demand for better and more accountable Government institutions. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, when we were in Turkana County, just to quote one final example, I know for a fact that our various committees visited many devolution-led programmes that have been rolled out by the Turkana County Government in the past 10 years. They appreciated and compared what is recorded in the audit reports. I know for a fact that Members of the County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) chose not only to sit in the County Assembly, but also visited many of the programmes that were being found for one reason or the other as not being properly established or rolled out. They could see it and take the auditors to task. I have always said that the structure with which we run our CPAC leaves 90 or sometimes even 100 per cent of the membership without a clear ground picture of the projects that are being discussed. If you are discussing a particular road in the Kericho, perhaps, it is only the Senator of that county that knows the road, tea buying centre or project where auditors have flagged out issues of maladministration. The rest of Committee Members may have no idea of what happened in a particular institution. Therefore, it is easy for auditors or the county government to get away with issues that would have been flagged out or people would have had better understanding had they gone and interacted with people in that particular forum. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}