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"id": 196323,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Mungatana",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Medical Services",
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"legal_name": "Danson Buya Mungatana",
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"content": " Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, may I also take this opportunity to thank the Committee that did a wonderful job, in particular, the able presentation that was made here by Mr. Ethuro. The issues that have been raised here, in agreeing with previous speakers, need a lot of action in terms of implementation. One of the issues that came out during the presentation of the Report is that the accounting officers in the various Ministries of Government have continually been overshooting the budget that is allocated to them and yet the Permanent Secretary, Treasury, does not have any form of power to control these people. Emanating naturally from that recommendation, I would request, and I know that the Minister is here, that the Treasury, this year, should bring forth a Bill in this House for us to empower the Permanent Secretary, Treasury, to hold responsible, personally, any accounting officer in the Government who overshoots the budget. They should be made to personally pay for that expenditure. That is the only way some discipline will be instilled in expenditure within the Government. 572 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 22, 2008 Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, in his Report to us, Mr. Ethuro also raised issues of concern with construction of the roads they visited, for example, the Moi-Cheptiret Road where there was a contract which was terminated, another contract was awarded and also terminated. Even when some professional consultancy services were sought and Kshs26 million was paid out, still no good results were realised. The recommendation there is that the KACC should investigate this particular project right from its inception to its completion. I want to pause there and say something about the KACC. Ordinarily, we have passed a law here that says that every year, the KACC must present reports to this Parliament of how they have been performing outside there. I was going to say that those reports, when they come to this House, they talk about who was caught taking Kshs10,000 and some petty thieves somewhere else. However, when it comes to the real issues that are presented by this Parliament, for example, a specific demand by this Parliamentary Committee, we never get those reports from the KACC. I want to propose that this Committee goes a step further to extract some of the recommendations that it will send to the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC). We, as Parliament, require such a body to answer questions by this Committee before they present their reports to us. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, there is a very clear recommendation in this Report to the effect that recommendations contained in the Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land, also known as the Ndung'u Report, be implemented. I am very happy that our new Minister for Lands has pledged to implement the Ndung'u Report. It has taken so many years, since the year 2000 up to today, for it to be implemented. We have been told that in the Coast Province, 67 public plots and public houses for civil servants were allocated to individuals, whereas 320 plots in Nairobi, some of which contain Government houses, were allocated to individuals. This is public land. We need to repossess it. That is the major recommendation contained in the Ndung'u Report. We hope that our Minister for Lands will keep his word this time round. We have had many other Ministers who went to the Ministry with steam, but somewhere along the road, they left the matter alone. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Ndung'u Report went further to say that some of the allocations were done legally by the Head of State, pursuant to the powers conferred on him by Section 9 of the Government Lands Act, Cap.208. Such powers need not be the reserve of the President in this kind of a new democratic society. It is time that we re-visit some of these old Acts of Parliament which supplement corruption. I would urge the Ministry, having given a public pronouncement that it will deal with corruption, to also bring to this House the necessary legal amendments, so that we can strip the President of the powers to allocate houses or Government plots. In the past, this power was abused. We do not know what will happen in future if this kind of power remains in our Acts of Parliament. Under irregular expenditure, there is an issue about 300 vehicles which were purchased at a cost of Kshs278 million. However, there is no proof that after the money was paid by the Office of the President, the vehicles were actually supplied. In this Report, it is further stated that there is no information as to who the supplier was. So, we have Kshs278 million which was unaccounted for. If you read further, you will see there is another Kshs708 million that was paid, but which was not accounted for. Another recommendation here calls upon the Director-General of the KACC to further investigate this matter. Amongst the matters on which the Director-General of the KACC must report to Parliament, must be specific issues that we, as Parliament, have asked him to look into, so that we get fair information. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, there is the issue of Ministries never winning any case in court. There were even instances where Ministries were not represented in court by the Attorney- General (AG). Time has now come for us to make the AG personally liable in matters relating to these kinds of cases. If you look at the kind of losses we, as a nation, have suffered because of pure negligence, it is not excusable. We need to change. Once public officials are not made personally April 22, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 573 liable, then these kinds of things will continue. For instance, we are told that there is a State Counsel who was to represent the Government in a case involving Kshs11 million. This case involved a contractor called M/s Highway Furniture, who was to construct the District Headquarters in Kirinyaga District. We are told that this lawyer called M/s V.V. Prassad, never turned up in court. In fact, he never bothered, despite the fact that he was the person who was charged with the responsibility of handling that matter. As a result, the Government lost that money. In this Report, the Government was forced to pay, from an original claim of Kshs11 million to Kshs48 million. The contractor was then counting interest and damages. We are informed that M/s V.V. Prassad was not a Kenyan. He ran away to India, his country of origin. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, this tells us a lot about the hiring policy of lawyers. How can we employ a State Counsel who is not a Kenyan to represent the Kenyan Government in matters that cost millions of shilling to the Government? It is truly time that the AG establishes a criteria for hiring lawyers. How can we hire a person who does not hold a Kenyan passport to represent the Kenyan Government in matters that involve millions of shillings? This is not the first case. It is a shame to this country for things like that to happen. The AG must come up with a clear policy on hiring of personnel. Emanating from this Report, we must stop hiring State Counsels who are not Kenyans. As a matter of fact, those hired to represent the Government must be citizens of this Republic. This is because they will have feelings for us. If you are a lawyer from India, or another country, you will come, cut a deal with the defence lawyers, collect your money and run away from the country, never to come back again, because you do not have feelings for this country. Therefore, the AG must stop hiring any person who is not Kenyan to represent us. There must be a clear policy within his Chambers, so that if at any time we have cases of, at least, Kshs10 million, if they are not able to defend us, as a Government, they hire pre-qualified firms of advocates with proven capabilities. At that point, if they lose those cases, we can sue them for professional negligence. That criteria must be established in this country. I am sure that if we do that, we will save this nation the millions that could be lost. It is also time for the Attorney-General to decentralize all the legal services. We must not say that just because the Constitution says he is the Chief Legal Advisor to the Government, then he should represent all the Ministries. We now have 40 Ministries! I do not see how the Attorney-General's Chambers--- When we had only 33 Ministries last year and 25 Ministries before, they failed to defend the Ministries. How will they now do it when we have 40 Ministries? Time has come to have a total decentralisation of legal services. Every Ministry and Minister needs legal services within his Ministry. We do not want Ministers walking out there and making pronunciations that do not make sense to any lawyer or even an ordinary citizen. We do not want Ministers talking outside the ambit of the law. That means they need to have their own legal department. We need to decentralise the Attorney-General's Chambers yesterday, so that we can have proper things being done within the law. We have had a problem of returning Government money back to the Treasury because the financial year has come to an end and yet, services have not been given to our people! Money has not been spent in various districts. That has been a continuing problem. The Committee recommended that, that habit should stop! Kenyans need services outside there. We need proper planning structures. There has been an habit of all procurement officers not doing anything. A lot of work is delayed until when they know that money is supposed to go back to the Treasury. When they know the time has come, they quickly start spending that money without regard to any financial structures and regulations. We would like to see that particular recommendation implemented without any delay. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, there is a recommendation on the question of public debt. In this country, the Minister in charge of the Treasury can walk out today, go to another 574 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 22, 2008 nation, World Bank or International Monetary Fund (IMF) and commit this country to billions of dollars in debt! He never comes back to this Parliament to get any form of approval. We then continue carrying that burden of public debt for generations to come. We pay now, next year, our children pay and their children also pay. In this country, the Constitution has given that kind of power to the Minister who is in charge of the Treasury. Time has now come - and I hope we will do it soon--- We have all given a public commitment that we will change the Constitution within 12 months. It is high time that the Minister in charge of the Treasury, before he commits the Treasury or this country's economy to debt, he must come to this Parliament to get approval. At all times, what we do here during the Budget is: \"We stand here! There is so much money which has come! There are these proposals for the Budget expenditure.\" Then, we are supposed to approve that wholesale. But when the Minister is going to borrow money outside to commit us to debt, he is not bound by the Constitution to come and ask us. It is terrible to hear on page 10 of this Report - even though it was many years ago - that the public debt at that time rose from Kshs337 billion to Kshs454 billion within a period of one year! That is Kshs100 billion more. The current debt is now at Kshs700 billion! This is the Minister in charge of Treasury. Parliament is not informed in any way. We need to change that law. We need to empower Parliament to question such deeds. That is because one of the duties of every Parliamentarian is to make sure that public monies, which are put in the Consolidated Fund, are properly utilised for the purposes for which they were meant. Why then do we emasculate Parliament so much that it is not able to question the Executive when it goes to commit us abroad? I think this should be a prime issue in the intended constitutional review of our Constitution, so that the Treasury could be coming to Parliament, inform hon. Members that we need to do domestic borrowing. Sometimes, they come and do domestic borrowing and increase the price of money in Kenya. Your loan which you borrowed at an interest rate of 18 per cent, suddenly shoots up to 30 per cent or 25 per cent! That is because the Minister decided to borrow and you were not aware. You cannot explain it to your constituents, business people or even to yourself. If Parliament is to regain its position in Kenya, as it should, we should be given that opportunity to cross-examine those commitments. We need to bring back power to the people in this House. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we have heard concerns expressed on the amount of indebtedness in this country. We have had countries which have been forgiven of their debts. The new Minister for Vision 2030 has told us that he is going to champion that matter and make sure that Kenya gets a debt relief. I think we need also, as we talk about our public debt, to be very careful. We are also informed that if your country is forgiven debt because it is unable to pay, then its credit facilities are shut out. Then, it becomes a dangerous country for us to invest in. What we need to be talking about is whether we can reschedule some of our debts, where necessary. Where a country is telling Kenya that it wants to help us do some projects, it should come. If it is a bilateral arrangement with Japan or another country, and they want to give us 100 million Yen for some project, they should forgive us some of the debts in a manner that we will pay. But we should not mess up our credit status. It is important for us to start understanding these matters early enough, so that we do not make some of those mistakes. We have come a long way from the time that procurement was all a mess in Kenya. What we are asking now is that the procurement rules and the laws that we have passed in this country need to be implemented to the letter. Stories that we are reading in page 32, where we are told that the Ministry of Planning and National Development at that time procured a unit cost for a note book at double the price available in any market. Those things must not happen again! They must not be part of this country again. We have passed many laws and regulations to guide procurement in this country. We have definitely made some strides. However, we would like to see good implementation of the laws that we have passed. I want to agree with a previous hon. Member who spoke about the lack of implementation of these reports. We are very happy with the PAC. It has brought two reports to be discussed in this April 22, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 575 House. I think we should commend the PAC for that. We thank Mr. Ethuro and his Committee for the work that they did at that time. For us to really act as a deterrent to future Accounting Officers in terms of misuse of public funds, we must have televised live coverage of these proceedings. You know when you read about the billions that have been misappropriated year in, year out, and yet the culprits are just walking freely, I think it is high time that the hearings of the PAC were televised and also made public. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Speaker of the National Assembly has exercised his powers under Standing Order No.1 to allow televised live coverage during certain occasions in this Parliament. He has also given a ruling that before 31st December, 2008, we will have televised debates in Parliament. We support that ruling. We are with him on that matter. He can start it partially by permanently invoking that Standing Order. He could say, that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the Public Investments Committee (PIC) proceedings be televised live, so that it acts as a deterrent to other Accounting Officers in the Government. Their proceedings should be made live and open immediately. This is so that when a Permanent Secretary hears that so-and- so was stealing and misappropriating Government funds in a particular year, then he or she will be careful not to do so, in future. This must be implemented immediately. We have been talking about a Prime Minister in this country for quite a number of years. Although we have promised Kenyans that we will have an overhaul of a constitutional review exercise, we still have made a partial change to the Constitution to include that important office. Although we are saying that by the end of the year, in a period of 12 months, we shall review the Standing Orders and effect them, let us start now by doing a partial amendment, by the Speaker ruling here permanently that PIC and PAC proceedings be televised live. If we do so, we shall deter those misappropriating public funds. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, also when you look at these Reports, you will find out, very sadly, that the majority of the people who wrote them are not with us today. I remember they were eleven. Only three out of them have retained their seats. They held 98 sittings for the 2000/2001 Report. They held another 98 sittings for the Report of 2001/2002. They spent a lot of time in Parliament trying to do some work for us. Do you know what happened to them? Only three of them came back. Nine of them were thrown out. Why? Because nobody knew what they were doing. Instead of being in their constituencies, they were here trying to help this country, but they were thrown out. It is because nobody knew what they were doing. Nobody knew that Mr. Ethuro and the others who lost their seats, held 98 sittings when we were out there doing our own work even during campaigns. We lost some very quality leaders like hon. Billow Kerrow and others. They spent their time doing this work. I think if we had televised live sittings of these committees where the constituents could see them grilling people who stole money from their districts, Constituency Development Fund (CDF), then, probably, we could continue having those people still siting with us here today. They have paid the price with their own seats because of their sacrifice to this House. The archaic rules of this House refuse to let sittings of such Committees be televised live and yet they are doing quality work for this country. I think the House, in adopting this Report, should pass the recommendation that the Speaker should seriously introduce live coverage of hearings of these committees. It will act as a deterrent measure to officers who misappropriate public funds and also help the hon. Members that we have seconded from our political parties to maintain visibility that they are doing work for us. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, with those remarks, I beg to support."
}