Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1456943,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1456943/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 191,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 170,
        "legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
        "slug": "bonny-khalwale"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, that is a housekeeping issue that I will leave to the Chairman to manage. As far as the House is concerned, this is their Report. It is not a report of a subcommittee. Therefore, I would have wanted to know the reason other Members did not sign. Allow me bragging rights, Chairman of the Committee. You have had very good words for the County Assembly of Kakamega. Like you, I congratulate the Chair, Hon. Kelvin Mahelo, MCA for Chegulo-Butali, for being a good Chair of that committee in Kakamega. He had started getting lost. You remember my conversation with you, Mr. Chairman? I quickly called and told him that was not the way to go. When he asked what I was talking about, I asked whether he does not have the capacity or had not reflected on the meaning of oversight of the Senate. I asked him to at least look and respect the ruling of the Supreme Court, which pronounced itself; that this work must be done by this Senate. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, there is something that we can learn from each other. It is not by chance that the County Assembly of Kakamega is doing this work. I deliberately addressed the County Assembly of Kakamega and emphasized on the role of oversight. I also created 12 breakout committee meetings in my home in Malinya, where I was reserving up to four to six hours with the MCAs from every constituency. I have 12 constituencies and during this time, I was emphasizing to them the importance of oversight vis-à-vis the risk of sycophancy. I am glad that they have taken it up, and it is the way to go. Going to the substantive issues raised, I am very impressed that the committee has been thorough, in particular, when I look at the actual issues, I noticed that the committee was able to flag out the important issue of spending money on items that do not exist in the budget. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, you also raised to committee Members the issue of unbudgeted payments, where you found that Kshs1 million had been given to the CAF and Kshs500,000 had been given to the SOCATT. Having recommended that these people be surcharged, demonstrates the seriousness of this exercise. The public will not lose this Kshs1.5 million as it will be recovered through a surcharge. I also noticed on specific issues that the committee went and focused on cash flows from operating activities. You put these county assemblies to task and I am happy that the matter was resolved. Thereafter comes the issue of pending bills. Whereas this matter of pending bills was resolved, we need during this debate to remind county assemblies that pending bills should never exist because of the structure of the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act. The PFM Act is crafted in such a manner that you can only give out a tender for a project for which you already have a budget. If you have given out a tender to a project you have a budget, it means at the end of the project, the budget will simply be expended on paying the contractors. There should never be a pending bill. The fact that there are pending bills in these county assemblies, means that money which was budgeted for particular projects and programmes is then diverted and taken to things that were never put in the budget. We must sound this to accounting officers in the county assemblies. 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."
}