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"id": 20295,
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"speaker_name": "Eng. Gumbo",
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"content": "Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, as I second this Motion, I want to say that this is not a ploy by the peasants to marginalise the rest. I would like to thank my Committee Chairman, a man I sometimes call the Chair of Chairs, for eloquently moving this Motion. I stand to second the Motion and recommend that this House approves the list as submitted by our Committee. I want to echo the words of my Committee Chairman by saying that we all must truly, as Members of Parliament, appreciate the good work that the CDF has done in just over six years that the CDF has existed. There is no gainsaying that the CDF today is the most visible public Fund ever in the history of Kenya in the nearly 50 years we have been independent. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, a survey has shown that over 95 per cent of Kenyans, both young and old, have at some point heard of or come into contact with the activities of the CDF, which is mostly the good work that the CDF is doing. In fact, I think that percentage is now higher. Virtually, everyone in this country knows about the CDF. I want to pay tribute to the engineers of this country, more particularly the person who brought the CDF idea to this House, my good friend and senior colleague, Eng. Muriuki Karue. This was truly a revolutionary idea that he came up with, and it has changed the face of our country. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, as the CDF Committee, we have walked the length and breadth of this country. In one of the constituencies we went to, we were so honoured and so happy to find that in just six years, the CDF had increased the number of secondary schools in that part of the country six times, from two secondary schools to 12 secondary schools. These are achievements which even the central Government could not claim to match in any way. These are the examples we need to show. As has been eloquently said by my able Chairman, hon. Ethuro, even the harshest critics of the CDF, who by the way, use very questionable tools to audit the CDF, have admitted that the success rate of the CDF is sometimes as high as 95 per cent. Being a highly educated Kenyan woman, you realize that a margin of error of 5 per cent is acceptable. So, there is no question about it. The CDF is a success story. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I have said in our meetings and to the Minister that one of my biggest concerns with the Board of the CDF, as we inaugurate and propose to have the Board approved today, is its apparent inability to demonstrate the extremely good work that the CDF has done. They have left it to activists like the National Taxpayers’ Association who have no proper tools and who sometimes engage sociologists to audit a building to try to make the CDF look bad when the Board has the resources. We give them a lot of money every year. As we recommend the approval of this Board, I want to ask the Minister that one of the things the Board should do is to engage on an aggressive impact assessment of the CDF as it is and most importantly highlight, through publicity campaigns, the good work that the CDF has done. This does not require anything. It only requires picking out the facts. As I rush to conclude, as the Members of Parliament, let it be our duty to ensure that the CDF is accommodated within the new Constitution. We need to - and I have informed my Chairman – propose amendments that will guarantee continuity of the CDF under the new environment. I say this because for some of us who have hopes of defending our seats as Members of Parliament, the CDF has made us more assertive. It has made us more relevant. These days, you hardly hear a Member of Parliament coming here to say that a toilet has collapsed in his constituency and whether the Government could help him to build it because we have a guaranteed resource envelop that helps us to do these things. Therefore, it is important - and we will come forward as a Committee - to propose that we do the necessary amendments. The public out there seems to think that the CDF is money owned by the MP, but speaking for myself, I have been here for almost four years, I have never even seen the CDF cheque book. So, really, it is these misconceptions that make the CDF, a very good thing, perhaps the best thing ever to happen to Kenya, to look bad. This is what we should look into. As we look forward to making these amendments, we should also look at the apparent contradictions that are there between the CDF and some of the laws that exist in the country, for example, the Public Finance Management Act, which gives a lot of powers to the office of the Accountant-General to come up with some controls that necessarily impede the progress of the CDF. I want to call upon my colleagues, Members of Parliament, that when we bring the proposals here to amend the CDF Act to align it with the Constitution, we must still build in the guarantees that will make sure that even as we route the CDF through the county assemblies, it guarantees every single constituency in Kenya an optimal resource envelop that we can use to do the work that the CDF has been doing. With those remarks, I wish to second."
}