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"id": 226160,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. J. Nyagah",
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"legal_name": "Joseph Nthiga Nyagah",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to support this Motion and thank my colleague, Mr. Omingo and his team, for a job well done. As we all know, it is not an easy job trying to comment, several years after Government expenditure has taken place. The circumstances under which this particular Committee works are very difficult. So, I would like to thank them for what was, indeed, a major effort. I do hope that as we proceed, we will be more up-to-date. At the moment, we are still far behind. We are talking about things that happened seven years ago. Therefore, to some extent, they are not very relevant. From the experience of the past, we hope that it will be possible for us to catch up and ensure that in the future, the Government does not misuse the resources that Kenyans put at its disposal. I do not know what procedure we can use to do this. I am not sure what this House needs to do; whether to skip a few years or to give some of these reports just a one-hour attention, so that we can catch up. What I am sure of is that it appears that there is need for us to be up-to-date, so that we can be commenting on things that happened last year, for example, and not what happened in pre-historic times, and start putting blame on people who are not even in positions of responsibility. I hope this House will find a system that will bring us up-to-date. I know that this point has been made over and over. It makes us, as a House, look in the eyes of Kenyans, as if we are not serious. When Kenyans, tonight, watch news on televisions and read newspapers tomorrow and find that we are talking about things that happened seven years ago, I guarantee that they will think that we are lazy and ineffective. They will also think that we do not know what we are doing when, in fact, it is not our fault, as parliamentarians, but that of the system that delivers this report. I would like to know, when the Minister responds, how far we are up-to- date. Is the Controller and Auditor-General up-to-date? Is he looking at last year's accounts? If he is not, then, as I said, we have a problem, and this House will continue looking not serious in the eyes of Kenyans. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was looking through the Report and found out that there is an issue of pending bills. Again, we are involved in another academic exercise. Pending bills has been an issue that has been discussed over and over. Committees have been set up, but because we are so far behind, we give Government officers and Ministries an excuse to continue having this problem of pending bills. Pending bills will be a problem for as long as we are not up- 668 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 17, 2007 to-date in our accounts. We can talk about cowboy contractors and all the contractors that we have to pay, but as long as we are dealing with pending bills of seven years ago, we are giving Government officers an excuse to continue misappropriating funds and pocketing the money that the very poor Kenyans work very hard to acquire or pay in form of taxes. Since this year we shall hold the General Elections, based on our past experience, we hope that pending bills are not going to play an important role in that exercise. We hope that this year, we will not see a repeat of what happened in the past. In the past, there was a tendency to sort out pending bills around October, November and December, just before the General Elections. I hope that this year will be different from other years. If there are pending bills, I hope that they will have been resolved well in advance, and that there will be no resolution of pending bills when Parliament has been resolved. There is a tendency to make payments when Parliament has been dissolved. Civil servants and Acting Ministers in positions do deals with contractors, and that has been a problem in the past. I hope we do not get the same problem this year. I hope that this Government, which is made up of respectable gentlemen on the other side, will ensure that they do not play around with things called \"pending bills\", so that as we take over in January, 2008, we do not inherit huge commitments that would have been made by our friends on the other side. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, historically, there has been the problem of donor funding. I am happy to note that the Committee has pointed out this issue. This issue has, over the years, been a problem from several points of view. One, we have weak systems of monitoring them. And as these weak systems persist, we give an excuse to our donors to withdraw the funds. We have, in the past, made commitments that the counter funds on the Kenya Shilling component would be available and, very often, the Treasury has not budgeted or provided for those funds. The effect of this has been that, we have lost funding from donors, or the funding has stayed for a long time because we were not ready, as a Government, with the portion that is ours. I hope that the Government will continue working, on a medium-term basis, where they can programme in their budgetary process so that they can know, for instance, that they are getting money from Japan. I know that the Japanese system can be very strict. We must ensure that the Kenya Shilling is available for purposes that it was meant for. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the second problem that I see with donor funding is that, sometimes, it is easy to misuse those funds when the control systems are weak. We also have to be careful to ensure that donors do not misuse us. Sometimes, they confuse our bureaucracy with many offers and complicated systems, and often, our Government officers are not necessarily well trained to deal with all those systems. We find weaknesses in the operative Ministries and in the Treasury when it comes to dealing with donors. Sometimes we are aware that donors confuse our people. Therefore, we need to train our officers in the art of negotiations with donors so that they can get the best possible packages that Kenya can attract from them. But, it is unfortunate when, at the end, we find that funds are not utilized either because of the ignorance of our negotiators or because we did not plan properly and well in advance and assured ourselves that we had money. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, another area which I have noted in the Report and for which I wish to thank the Committee for is that, the Government gets sued from time to time. When the Government is sued, there is a tendency for the Attorney-General's office and the parent Ministries to keep on blaming each other. You will hear an Accounting Officer from an operative Ministry saying: \"We lost, but the Attorney-General's Office did not tell us that we had this court order or decision\", or: \"We lost because the Attorney-General did not call our officers as witnesses to come to court on time\". I wish to confirm that, this confusion is sometimes deliberate because we all know how Government officers operate. They act as a cartel that can extend from an operative Ministry to the Attorney-General's offices. The fact that people do not turn up on time should not be taken lightly because it is, very often, deliberate collusion between people in the April 17, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 669 Attorney-General's offices and those in the operative Ministries. The effect of this is that we have lost a lot of money as a country. The excuse that I read in the Report is that there was no sufficient budget. Surely, 43 years after Independence, the Government which is made up of experts and people who have Phd in the Treasury should have a feel of how much they should budget for and put aside for the annual suits that the Government is faced with. That is a simple calculation. All you need to do is to take into account how much, over the last ten years, we have been sued for, how much we have been made to pay for, then do an arithmetical or statistical progression, which will give you very clear figures. For instance, if we put \"x\" amount of shillings aside this year, we will be able to meet the obligation that the Government has. What is the effect of not paying these people their money? The effect is that we have destroyed many Kenyan businessmen. Many Kenyan businessmen have been destroyed by Government officers who deliberately mess them up. Then they continue to ensure that they also mess the Judiciary officers. When, finally, they win the cases after many years, the Government system says that we have no money to pay these Kenyans. So, we have destroyed our own Kenyan businessmen by not paying them on time! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, may I suggest that the Government should have a special amount of money to take care of past suits and awards and also to take care of the future projected ones in the Budget they are preparing. We are now told that the Government is collecting record revenues through the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA). Why do we not put aside something so that we do not destroy our people? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as you recall, we have problems with similar suits, for example, the Anglo Leasing affair. I know that this has not been picked up in this Report but we are looking forward to it in future. The Anglo Leasing issue was discussed in this House. The Anglo Leasing issue was implemented by this Government and we lost a lot of money in the process. Later on, some money was returned to this country. But my biggest fear is not what was returned or what happened. That does not bother me! What bothers me is that, we have promissory notes in which the Republic of Kenya said: \"On this year, 2010, the month of July 1st, we will pay so much\" or, \"On this year, 2015, we will pay so much\". That is what bothers me! Our children and grandchildren are going to be left in a very difficult position. This year, I would like to see the Minister for Finance put substantial funds. Let us accept that we took money and we have problems with the Anglo Leasing issue. But that obligation is huge and we should budget and account for it. We should also be bold enough to bring it to this House and face the music for one week. But at the end of it all, we will have the money to meet those obligations that we undertook. I am not sure where we stand, sitting from where I am. All I know, from my background on finance, a thing called promissory note becomes due on the due date. What happens when that date arrives? I do not know. I just hope that the Public Accounts and Public Investments committees, as they look into the current books of accounts, will address this particular issue because it has the potential of huge losses or big problems for the future generations or governments of this country."
}