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"id": 183178,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/183178/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Oparanya",
"speaker_title": "The Minister of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030",
"speaker": {
"id": 201,
"legal_name": "Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya",
"slug": "wycliffe-oparanya"
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"content": "until a census is done and a proper method of calculating the poverty index is adopted. I do not understand how the Office of the Prime Minister, therefore, comes in. It is very unfair. I would want you to look at the minutes of the day I met the Members of the Committee. We have to take the business of this House very seriously. All said and done, let me move to some of the specific issues raised by Members of Parliament. Under the CDF, the issue of lack of well established institution mechanisms, administration weaknesses, poor planning linkages and flawed delivery of resources were raised. There was also the issue of involvement of Board of Management on day to day management of CDF. Last week but one, there was another issue on the CDF. A Member raised an issue and I said that we are now in the process of recruiting a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to run the CDF. Some of these issues are there because most of the staff we have are on secondment from the Ministry, Parliament or Ministry of Finance. As soon as we recruit a CEO, we shall have proper people recruited so that they manage the fund properly. This will leave some of the work to be undertaken by the CDF Board. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are issues of misappropriation. Every day, if you read newspapers you will find there is a case of misappropriation of the CDF. Under the Constituencies Development Fund (2007), the CDF Board is a body corporate. It can sue and be sued. We are hoping that it will now come up with a legal unit which will deal with issues of misappropriation more expeditiously than relying on the Central Government to deal with that. Instead of referring issues to the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC), they will deal with them directly. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government raised the issue of minimum threshold for CDF projects. This is a good idea. Sometimes you find that we spread out the funds quite thinly. This does not benefit members of the public who are supposed to benefit from the fund. There is also the issue of capacity building for Government officials such as the District Accountants and Fund Managers. This is being addressed and I hope that we will organise a workshop for all the Government officers. I will request Members of Parliament to be there so that some of the issues they are raising here can be raised at that forum so that we can thrash out some of the differences and obstacles in the management of the Fund. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the issue of monitoring and evaluation, as we push for the increase of the Fund, we need proper structures at the constituency level to ensure that there is proper implementation and evaluation of projects. There should also be proper reporting on activities undertaken in every constituency. These are issues we have a problem with now. The Member for Embakasi Constituency raised the issue of professionals not being used in projects. The Act allows that when proposing or evaluating a project, one can hire the services of private professionals. So, you either hire services of private professionals or use Government officials at the district level. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, looking at the census, collection of data is very 2952 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 22, 2008 important. We are taking next year's census very seriously. Members have raised the issue of us not using modern technology in collection of data. This is being undertaken. The Member for Emuhaya raised quite a number of issues on mapping which is his speciality. I can assure you I shall invite you to the Ministry and show you that we are using quite modern technology to undertake the census exercise. Already, I have gazetted rules and regulations that are going to be used, and I invite hon. Members to look at them. If there is something that can be changed, since we still have time, I will be ready to make the amendments to those rules and regulations. You expect that there will be challenges, but unlike in the last census, I am hoping that with technology, we will be able to undertake the exercise quite professionally. Regarding the IFAD projects, this was a critical issue; hon. Members raised the issue of having projects in South Nyanza and another one in central Kenya. Let me assure the hon. Members that we have had quite a number of projects under IFAD in other areas. For example, at the Coast Province, we had the Coast ASAL Development Project, which was undertaken by IFAD and it has already been completed. In Western Province, we had the Western Kenya Agricultural Programme, which was implemented and completed. In Eastern Province, we had a project on Eastern Province Horticulture and Traditional Food Crops Project, which was implemented by IFAD and completed. In the Rift Valley, Western Province and Nyanza Province, we had Small Holders Dairy Commercialization Project, which, at the moment, is on-going. But it is not within my Ministry. In the Rift Valley, Western, Nyanza, Eastern and Central Provinces, we have had the Small Horticulture Marketing Programme, which is being implemented under the Ministry of Agriculture and it is on-going. There are many others. So, it is not true that we have selectively selected the two regions for the two projects. There are other projects, but they are being implemented by other line Ministries. Furthermore, these two projects were started in 2002, and are just on-going. So, this was just an additional budget. In fact, both of them are coming to an end in two years' time."
}