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"id": 196559,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/196559/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Ethuro",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 158,
"legal_name": "Ekwee David Ethuro",
"slug": "ekwee-ethuro"
},
"content": "Thank you Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for protecting me. I would like to encourage my neighbour--- I assume he has not spoken, but he will have his chance. I will be here to listen to him. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Government now gives funding to primary schools. The Ministry of Health came up with the cost-sharing programme. I am talking about things that matter to the local people all over this nation. We trust the accountant to certify receipts and expenditure and determine whether it is properly incurred or not. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have never seen the cost-sharing money from the Lodwar District Hospital. This is because the accountants who were entrusted with making sure that the money was appropriated properly never did their job. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have a Water Users Association. I come from a very rural constituency, and these things are very important. We come there and say that for a 20- litre jerrican of water one needs to pay Kshs5. We expect this money to be collected, and at the end of the day you send an auditor to audit the accounts. Turkana Fishermen Co-operative Society is dying. This is a society which had a turn-over of about Kshs500 million. You sent a co-operative officer, who brought in an internal auditor. I am talking facts! Somebody needed them. Here they were. They came to the first meeting; we all agreed that there were no records; the money had been misused. Two weeks later, after giving the auditors and accountants an opportunity to verify the documents--- As Mr. Wamalwa has said, the rules of natural justice dictate that we do not condemn you before we have confirmed that you have stolen. It is the same auditor who will come and tell us after a month that everything is okay. You want us to pretend in this House! You want us not say things as they are! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will crucify me, but that is the job the Turkana sent me to do in this House! I have a responsibility to this nation to do exactly that! I have a responsibility to this nation to say what I want to say. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, part of the reason why we wanted the introduction of the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) was because we realised that there was too much corruption at the national level. Because of this corruption, money was not getting to various districts or constituencies. We came up with a good proposal that a small fraction, 2.5 per cent only, of the ordinary revenue, be allocated to the CDF. In so doing, at least, each and every constituency in this country will receive some minimal amount of resources that it can use for its development needs. I want to say that, that should be encouraged. We should even allocate more resources from outside the Central Government, especially now that we have a bloated Cabinet. We need to get more money out there, so that people in the constituencies of this country would have a particular amount of money that would be available to them. This Bill, once enacted, will ensure that we properly account for every 504 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 16, 2008 shilling. Sometime next week, we will bring the Report of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). During the Census of 1979, an ordinary pencil was procured at a price of Kshs10 by the Ministry of Planning. At that time, its retail price was Kshs1. Accountants and internal auditors were there. They did the examination bit and vouchers were prepared. Sometimes even after procuring in such an expensive manner, when you look at the stock records, you would find that the stocks were not even delivered. We do not want to talk about those things. These things must be said. In fact------"
}