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{
    "id": 1507456,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1507456/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 211,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Clauses 10 and 11 of the Bill seek to amend sections 15 and 16 to provide for the recruitment of a Deputy Auditor-General in place of a Senior Deputy Auditor-General. The current office has the Auditor-General and the substantive deputy is the Senior Deputy Auditor- General. We seek to amend that provision to provide for the recruitment of a Deputy Auditor- General. It now states the correct position that the recruitment shall be done by the Auditor- General and not the Advisory Board. It provided that the recruitment would be done by the Advisory Board and the appointment by the Auditor-General. The provision further aligns the responsibilities with the Constitution to cure the problems that the good judge found unconstitutional. This is a very detailed Bill, by and large. It aligns what was found to be unconstitutional. We have nothing to debate on what the courts found unconstitutional. We legislate and leave it to the courts to interpret the law. If the courts find particular sections or an entire law does not conform to the Constitution, they may declare so as they did. The onus remains on the House to correct what was found unconstitutional and align it with the Constitution. By and large, all the amendments in this Bill seek to align the sections that were found unconstitutional. I hope Members will support. As I indicated, the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning considered all these provisions and tabled their Report before the House. The Report, by and large, agrees with what the court found. We have no choice than to agree with them. I urge the House to support. The offices of the Auditor-General and the Controller of Budget are very critical under the architecture of the Constitution. Those offices ensure public resources are utilised in an accountable and transparent manner. We seek to further enrich their functions to ensure that there is not only transparency, but that public resources are applied in an accountable and efficient way so that we get value for money. More importantly, public resources should be applied pursuant to set policies to effectively improve the lot of the Kenyan people. If we fail to empower the Office of the Auditor-General, man is bound by temptations. Those charged with the responsibility of applying public resources get tempted. There must be something that tells you that however much you are tempted to touch public resources, there is somebody watching and superintending over those resources. This will ensure that you do not only apply the resources effectively and efficiently, but in a sustainable manner to safeguard the development of our country. More importantly, it is to ensure value for money in the application of public resources. When there is no value for money, we end up applying so much public resources in projects that do not give value to the Kenyan people. We have been told that Kenyans have no problem with paying taxes. What they want is value for every coin and cent that they pay in form of taxes. Kenyans want to see how resources are applied when a road is being constructed. I heard the debate earlier on the application and deployment of resources for roads development in the country. There are roads that have not been completed one year down the line because public resources were not applied in an efficient, accountable, transparent and effective manner to ensure value for money. A year down the line, a road that was improved to bitumen standards is dilapidated and worse than when it was a murram road. We have seen that across the country. That is why we must ensure the Office of the Auditor-General scrutinises how public resources are applied by State officers that are charged with that responsibility. All Members of Parliament bear the brunt of the public when the roads are impassable. Recently, the Member of the County Assembly (MCA) for Syokimau/Mlolongo Ward was forced to walk through ponds of water by his constituents because they felt he had failed them. They forget that the MCA has no resources to apply in the implementation of Government projects. If anything, the person they should have made to walk through that pond of water is either their governor or the member of the county executive committee (CEC) in"
}