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{
    "id": 1514446,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1514446/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 147,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Homa Bay Town, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Peter Kaluma",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "as the business of dealing with this Parliament. After that, we approved the second SRC under this Constitution. The first Commission had people like Mr. Oloo Aringo, who started the Parliamentary Service Commission. Immediately he went there, he forgot about the role of the Parliamentary Service Commission and led SRC in encroaching into the mandate of the Parliamentary Service Commission. The latest Commission that has just gone out had Mr. Dalmas Otieno Anyango. Hon. Mbui and other Members will confirm to you how eloquent he used to be – while seated where my brother is now seated - about the place of Parliament and how remuneration should be organised. When he joined the SRC, hitting back at Parliament became his business. I do not know whether it is the SRC which is cursed or the people we send there. Now that we are approving the appointment of a new team, I pray that they may be alive to the fact that, as Parliament, we have done everything to enable them discharge their mandate. The Salaries and Remuneration Commission Act is very detailed in terms of their mandate, how they need to do job evaluation, peg salaries to the roles of the various bodies and harmonise salaries, so that the people who are performing same roles and functions earn equally. However, that has not been happening. If these nominees are approved, I request them to avoid the jinx of the past where SRC encroaches into the mandate of other commissions. For purposes of protecting Parliament, we have the Parliamentary Service Commission. Its mandate of dealing with the welfare and facilities for Parliament is constitutional. The SRC still issues gazette notices prescribing the amount of tea to be taken. Members may remember a Gazette Notice issued during the 12th Parliament, in which the SRC prescribed even the number of cups of tea that Members of Parliament should take during a committee meeting, not knowing that some of us do not take tea. There were also issues of per diem and allowances. Such matters sometimes end up in court. When that happens, the monies we budget for operations and maintenance of SRC are used in wars over remuneration of workers in Government agencies. This also affects the Judiciary. I do not know why SRC does not respect the jurisdiction of equally independent commissions like the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), which deals with welfare and facilities in the Judiciary. The SRC tells judges who want to sit together in a conference for peer review – most of those sit in benches – the amount of money they should spend. The SRC also tells those judges that they cannot have per diem when they converge at a conference. This delays determination of cases which are handled by more than one judge - who are constituted as a bench - and have to sit somewhere together. We have judges from Malindi and Busia who convene in Nairobi. So, you find that a judge cannot travel because the SRC, which does not know how the Judiciary operates, has encroached into the mandate of the JSC. Beyond the law, we have adequately facilitated the SRC, which people think should be a part-time commission. How long should it take to determine and harmonise the pay for various state bodies? In spite of that thinking, as Members of Parliament, we said that it shall never be part-time because the remuneration levels of the various cadres of public servants need to be reviewed constantly. We support this Commission. They will continue to operate full-time. However, they will be restricted to their mandate. We will support them with the budget as required by Article 249 of the Constitution, so that they can perform their role; but we need to urge the commissioners to avoid a situation where there is litigation and hitting at Parliament. Hon. Speaker, if I may ask, why, for instance, is the salary of a Cabinet Secretary bigger than that of a Member of Parliament? If you look at the Constitution, for the Judiciary, there is a statement to the effect that the remuneration of judges shall not be changed to their detriment. The remuneration of commissioners of the commissions created in Chapter 15 of the Constitution cannot be changed to their detriment. However, we do not have a similar The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for informationpurposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}