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"speaker_name": "Mr. Ethuro",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Planning and National Development",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this particular Motion. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I had the honour of serving on this Committee in my other life. I want to pay homage to hon. Omingo, who chaired this Committee very ably, and to all the Members who were with us. I can see Prof. Ojiambo there; she was also with us. This House needs to acknowledge the commitment of that Committee for making a deliberate effort to tackle two years at a go in order to clear the backlog of audit reports. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, while we appreciate that the PIC and PAC should deal with dead matter, in the sense that they tackle posthumous and postmortem kind of business, we also wanted to see that there is not a lag period of five to 10 years; we wanted to have, at least, a lag period of about one or two years, so that we can deal with the issues in good time, make the necessary recommendations, and, hopefully, the Treasury, through Treasury memoranda, implement some of these recommendations. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at the recommendations of this Committee, in all the years, every recommendation is about reiteration. For instance, \"the Committee reiterates its earlier recommendation...\" is in almost every paragraph. \"The Committee reiterates the further recommendation that the Accounting Officers should follow the laid down procedure...\" is repeated. In fact, you do not need to read a lot of this. On page 7, it says: \"The Committee reiterates its earlier recommendation under paragraphs 16 and 17 of 1998/99 that the Permanent Secretary, Treasury, should ensure that no funds are advanced from the Civil Contingency.\" The report is full of \"The Committee reiterates\" this and that. It is basically a litany of failure by the Treasury to implement what already this Committee has recommended. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to submit that the two watchdog Committees have, on behalf of the entire House, a responsibility to play the role that we did, to be the watchdog and ensure that things are done properly, and that the taxes that Kenyans pay are appropriated properly. You tend to appreciate the kind of problems this Committee encountered. Even with the new administration and new officers appointed, we saw a lot of protectionism. Permanent Secretaries were protecting their predecessors even when they were serving two different regimes. I think this is just basic lethargy in adminstration and governance that needs to come to an end. I am convinced that, at least, this Government has the commitment to ensure that this bureaucratic red tape is looked into afresh. Why do I say this? There are two institutions that play a big role in the way the PAC can be April 17, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 663 effective. One is the Treasury, which has the singular responsibility to implement the recommendations of the Committee on behalf of the House. The second one is the Attorney- General. I must state in the strongest terms possible my embarrassment, that when the Attorney- General appeared before this Committee, even the queries that the Controller and Auditor-General had raised with his office, he could not reply to them. We have to take our jobs seriously. We have to take our positions in public office seriously. Even the correspondence between the two could not be reconciled, to the extent that they came all the way to the Committee. It was one of those meetings where we were looking for to meeting the \"Big Five\", but they were not ready. It is a mockery. I think we need to borrow from the Ugandan experience and appoint an Inspector- General of Police to sit with the PAC, so that somebody who is not doing his job seriously can be booked into a small cell in the House for a few hours to learn what it means not to take our work seriously. Not a single case where Government was taken to court could be won. The office of the Attorney-General always recommended consent judgement. One is left to wonder: Is the Office of the Attorney-General working for the Government or for the contractors? That applied to cases where we had very clear circumstances that the Government should not have lost money. We are talking about a constitutional office holder who should protect the Government. We have not recovered a single shilling. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let us just go beyond the business of auditing who stole what. We should also be auditing value for money. As the Assistant Minister for Planning and National Development, for example, I should account for my time in that Ministry. It does not matter whether I am in Government, the Opposition or somewhere in between. What matters is: Kenyans have given you a particular responsibility. You should deliver on that responsibility. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Report covers the problem of pending bills. In fact, in that particular financial year, we had a special audit of pending bills and the Committee covered that. The Ministry of Roads and Public Works had its own committee. The Treasury had a committee on pending bills. We now have another committee - the Pending Bills Closing Committee (PBCC) headed by Mr. D.G. Njoroge, who is a former Controller and Auditor-General. I have listened to several contributions of hon. Members and some of them have cast aspersions on the integrity of Mr. D.G. Njoroge. They wondered why he should be in that committee. I do not know Mr. D.G. Njoroge as a person. But when I look at the reports of the Controller and Auditor- General that we rely on as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), I cannot find another appropriate personality in the whole Republic to sit in that committee, if not Mr. D.G. Njoroge."
}