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"id": 14967,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Magwanga",
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"legal_name": "Joseph Oyugi Magwanga",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to support this Motion. I am a member of this Committee and we sat down and received submissions from a number of departments and Ministries. It is really worrying in this country that 250 employees were fired and another 50 employees employed at the same time. I want to say that I concur with the chairperson who moved the Motion. I want to take this opportunity to thank her very much for chairing this Committee and deliberating over these issues up to the time when we came up with the recommendations. The recommendations which are in this Report are very good, and they aim at serving the people of this country. We want every person of this country to be treated fairly. This is what the Departmental Committee on Labour and Social Welfare means. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to say that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Local Government appeared before us and made their presentation. We realized that these employees worked for five to ten years and at the end of the day, they were not paid, which is actually very unfair to the citizens of this country. I want to say that most of these local authorities have problems. They hire and fire employees at will, which is very wrong. They do not observe the labour laws of this country. If you look at it keenly, this has to do with corruption in the local authorities. The councillors would wish to employ their brothers, sisters and wives to work in these councils. This is not the justice which our forefathers fought for. I would encourage this House to adopt this Report, so that some action can be taken against these local authorities, particularly the Thika Municipal Clerk who was working at that time and the current one. We tried to summon him to appear before us and he refused to appear before us to make a presentation. This showed how crude some of our employees are, which is not good for this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will find that in most cases, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) normally says that there is some amount of money whose source they do not know. In this case, the Clerk to the Thika Municipal Council remitted some deductions to the NSSF. At the end of the day, we will not know the people who had contributed this money. If those monies were deducted, there must have been some people from whom those monies originated. If the monies originated from those 250 workers and reached National Social Security Fund (NSSF), they will be put in a suspense account. That will, definitely, encourage corruption and nobody will know where to place it. There will be no accountability. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will realize that the amount that is allocated to the local authorities is almost equivalent to the amount allocated to the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). But when you go to the ground, you will never see any project done by local authorities. That must be investigated to find out where those monies are spent. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as the Committee on Labour and Social Welfare, we went through the various reports which were actually presented to us. We realized that Thika Municipality has no records at all to show that those employees were employed. How can employees be in a firm or a local authority for all those years and yet, there are no records to show that? I even asked the auditor: “How come you are an auditor and you do not know that those employees worked in that firm for all those years? Where were the employees getting their wages from?” The labour laws state very clearly that when a worker works for more than six months, he or she is supposed to be confirmed as a permanent employee. How can employees work for up to seven years without being confirmed as permanent employees of Thika Municipality? That amounts to an irregularity and it must be investigated. I would wish to call upon the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Local Government to streamline the management of our local authorities in order to safeguard the interests of the people of this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to conclude by saying that there should be a system under which our local authorities should actually operate; where they can be checked and audited properly to establish how they carry out their duties. If that is not done, I am afraid that this country will not achieve Vision 2030 which we have been preaching every now and then. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is worrying that---"
}