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"id": 226166,
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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 have been in international banking for 11 years and I wish to confirm that what hon. Muite has said is correct and hence my fear that I am not sure we are taking the correct legal action in terms of following up this issue. If we let these things slide down, I am worried about the obligations of the future generation because whether these things are fraudulent or not, when the day of payment comes, that obligation must be met because of the irrevocable nature of those promissory notes. I want to thank hon. Muite for that information because it has clarified the point I was trying to make. That is with regard to Anglo Leasing type deals. That then highlights other such deals that I am not aware of, that are not in the public domain. I would like the PAC to delve into this subject much more closely. The Committee should go into the depth of these matters, and report back to us the effects of Anglo Leasing-type transactions where we know that whether we like it or not, when the day comes, we will have to meet that obligation, unless we sort it out legally in advance. I do not understand what \"legally\" means because I am not a trained lawyer. I am only a trained banker. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to talk about the variation of contracts. This is one of the easiest ways of Government officers misappropriating money and becoming multi- millionaires. Since Independence, we have seen very poor people becoming very wealthy over night through variation of contracts. I am speaking of Government officers, but they do this in co- operation with contractors. I hope, as the report says, the Government will continue to tighten systems so that variation of contracts eventually becomes something of the past. We should not have variation of contracts which make contracts much bigger than they are. I do not know the details, but I am told that at the Kenya Airports Authority, we started with Kshs800 million. I am now told that we are in the region of Kshs10 billion to Kshs15 billion through variation of contracts. I am not even sure about the legality of these contracts. The magnitude of the contracts that we are dealing with is very huge. It is to the tune of Kshs15 billion. I recently saw an advertisement of the Managing Director in the newspapers trying to explain and justify that. To me, that is a totally new contract. When you go into the details of this contract, you get confused. This then raises a fundamental subject, which I, as an ordinary Kenyan, who never studied law, gets confused about. According to the Constitution, the President should have created Ministries which should have been approved by Parliament. Once Parliament approves Ministries, a Cabinet should be appointed. That is what I have been told. This did not happen. Parliament never approved the list of the Ministries. Therefore, the Cabinet is illegal as per Chapter 16 of the Constitution. I am trying to sound knowledgeable. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, since the President did not bring to this House the list of the Ministries and we did not approve the creation of the Ministries, we have a lot of illegalities. Even appointments of chairmen and managing directors of parastatals like the Kenya Airports Authority could be construed to be illegal because Ministers did not have the authority to appoint them. This was an illegality from the beginning. This is what I am told by my lawyer friends. The contracts have been varied from Khs800 million to Kshs15 billion. We have a series of illegalities from the Minister who illegally appointed the managing director and who has continued to award contracts to the tune of Kshs15 billion. I have given that example because of the magnitude of what we are doing at the KPA. April 17, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 671 In an election year, it is very easy to justify, for developmental reasons, why we need to award these contracts. Nobody has a problem with that. The PAC needs to look at these things to see if the way we constituted our Government on 14th January, 2003, was legal or illegal. I will be pursuing this matter later and I hope my lawyer friends will help me, so that we can get to the bottom of whether all the appointments that were done in 2003 were not, in fact, illegal. This is from Ministers, chairmen and managing directors of parastatals. I submit that these appointments were illegal. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in conclusion, I would like the Committee to continue paying specific attention to the road construction. I asked a Question in this House last year as to what is the cost of constructing a kilometre of road in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The cost of constructing a kilometre of road in Kenya is higher than in Tanzania and Uganda. All the road construction materials like bitumen come by road from Mombasa or Dar-es-Salaam to the hinterland and yet the cost of constructing a kilometre of road in Kenya is more expensive than in our neighbouring countries. The Committee should go into the details of these things. It should not look at things superficially. It should sit with private and Government engineers and then help this House by informing us some of these things. The amount of money that is involved in some of these contracts is so huge that we need to have a better control than a sentence in a report, which implies that all is well, when in fact, all is not well. There is a road I use every two weeks when I travel to Meru. The quality of the road from the border of Embu and Meru is sub-standard. The road from Makutano to Embu is of very good standard, but when I continue with my journey on my tours of Mt. Kenya East, I find that after Thuci River, the quality of the road is sub-standard. What is the cost of constructing a kilometre of road between Makutano and Embu Town and from Thuci to Meru Town? I suspect there are games being played by the contractor of the road from Thuci to Meru Town. This is my observation as a layman who uses that road once in a while. I would like the Committee to stop addressing things from a light point of view and get into the details. The National Assembly should give the Committee tools with which to work. If the Committee is dealing with something of engineering nature, it should be allowed to bring in consultants, not necessarily from the Government, but also from outside, who can help us. That is the only way this House will perform its oversight role that it plays in terms of supervising the funds that we give to the Government to develop our country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, I would like to talk about the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF). Every person who wants to be a councillor or a Member of Parliament in this country, the first thing they want to attack is the CDF. It is time this Committee looked at the magnitude, as our colleague said earlier, of LATF's sums of money. We are being put on the spot, through the Press, by the people who want our seats only by criticising the way the CDF money is being applied. Could the Press help start focusing on the very huge sum of money provided to local authorities through the LATF? Councillors share out this money amongst themselves in a very informal way. They misuse this money! What do they do when they want to attack a Member of Parliament, say, on a road construction project? They say that it is their road or their bridge when, in fact, it has been done using CDF money. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is also a contradiction which the Committee should look into. Government officers in the Ministry of Roads and Public Works are claiming to have done roads that have been done using CDF money. We need to have a system in place for the Committee to begin to look at the whole issue of co-ordination of the application of LATF, the Ministry and CDF monies, so that all the blame does not go only to Members of Parliament and CDF, but is spread evenly among the LATF, the Ministry and the CDF, and also to ensure that the 672 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 17, 2007 money is applied properly. With those few words, I beg to support."
}