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"id": 231560,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Ochilo-Ayacko",
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"legal_name": "Ochilo George Mbogo Ayacko",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this very important Motion. I want to thank and congratulate the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), hon. Omingo, and the other Members of the Committee, for the good effort they put towards the production of this Report. I also want to thank Parliament as an institution for supporting this Report. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you know very well that when the current administration came to power, their clarion call was \"zero tolerance to corruption\". Now, you know that the PAC is one of the Committees that this House uses to fight corruption but what was and is still expected of the current administration is to support all organs that are fighting corruption. However, it is disappointing to note that the composition and membership of this Committee, has from time to time, been changed through the Executive hand. That cannot be interpreted as zero tolerance to corruption; it can only be interpreted as destabilisation of Committees that are supposed to fight corruption. To make matters worse, if you now look at party affiliation of this House to really determine the composition of such an important Committee--- I want to say that the PAC and the PIC are Committees that Parliament uses to achieve its constitutional function of oversight. Parliament passes the Budget as required by the Constitution and Parliament, according to the same Constitution, should oversee the same expenditure through such Committees. So, when through the 4142 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES December 5, 2006 invisible hand of the Executive, membership of the committee is destabilised, it undermines the work of Parliament as set out in the Constitution. It also negates the call that was made by our good Government at the time our President was being sworn in, that corruption will not be tolerated; it will be zero tolerated. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said that, I want to say that if you look at the Report that we are debating today, these are activities that took place in the Financial Year 1998/1999 and most of the players who actuated or perpetrated these activities may have passed on to the other world where you cannot punish them. I hope they will be punished where they are now if we are to be punished for the misdeeds we do on earth. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to urge this House and particularly the Government that is charged with the responsibility of executing the activities of this House to join this House in making sure that we debate the current report or reports of the previous year. We are debating a Report of nearly eight years ago and we are purporting to make recommendations that are supposed to rectify or remedy the situation that took place that time. Actually, we are debating the Government that was led by the retired President and what we are talking about may disrupt his retirement and I think the delay is not good for justice and good governance in this country. So, if we are able to do our work in time and make sure that the recommendations are acted upon, then we will be doing what the public expects us to do. In as much as the Committee is PAC through which the Government accounts for the funds given to it, we are also accountable to the public for the payment and the support we receive from them. If we are doing the work in 2006, work that ought to have been done in the year 1999, that accountability is not timely. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at this Report particularly on the general observations and in so far as expenditure control is concerned, you will find that the perpetrators of problems with expenditure control is none other than State House. State House exceeded the expenditure that was given to it by more than UK£572 at that particular time and because it is State House that is given Executive authority, I wonder where they would acquire the moral attitude of pointing an accusing finger to the other Ministries if it is unable to control its expenditure. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will find that it is clearly unlawful to expend monies beyond what Parliament gives authority for such expenditure. This was taking place at that time. I suspect that this bad behaviour is continuing even presently, but Parliament on behalf of the people, is not seized of authority to punish the Accounting Officers for exceeding the expenditure and the person who is seized of that authority resides in State House and is also guilty of the same offence. So, this kind of situation is what puts the House in an awkward position, allows corruption to continue and also allows misuse of public funds to go on. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in proper democracy you cannot exceed the expenditure authorised by Parliament by even a single cent. State House has done so. As many as eight other Ministries continue to do so and the Permanent Secretaries who were Accounting Officers, then who were supposed to be accountable for this money, nobody does anything about them because they are appointees of the same person who is also guilty of this offence. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, under the same paragraph, there is a statement on public debt. It is clear that public debt at that particular time and even presently, is by far in excess of what is available for service delivery to this country. In other words, what we are collecting today, we are paying for the debts that were incurred or committed on behalf of this country and her citizens by previous administrations. What is available for you, I and the children of this country to use is less than 50 per cent. In fact, it does appear that the welfare of the citizens of this country is a function of luck and goodwill from God because they collect Kshs100 and out of that only Kshs47 is available for their welfare. No wonder this country is unable to respond to December 5, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4143 catastrophes like floods, famine and other things because the money that is available for that is already committed for servicing of debts, some of which are questionable. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I heard some hon. Members suggest that we go the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) way, that we say that we are very burdened by debts and that we cannot pay them. I know that is very bad manners. If you are an individual and you got indebted, you should not go to the person who lent you money and say that you can no longer pay. You would reduce your creditworthiness, if you did so. However, it is important to make sure that you monitor the indebtedness of the country and that you also make sure that proper budgeting is done for it and you also ascertain that the debt does not grow faster than revenue that is being collected by the relevant revenue agencies. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I suspect rightly that even the current Government has been borrowing heavily from the way I see western and eastern donors smiling. You know they are very happy when they lend you money because they also control you after lending you that money and this situation may be worse than it was at that particular time. So, it is important for rectification to be put in place and urgently. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is an Item which has dogged one administration after another, called Pending Bills. Pending bills do two sets of damages to people in this country: If suppliers of goods and services are not paid, they are completely wrecked. Some of the goods and services that these people supply to the Government are hinged, upon borrowing, from commercial banks. So, if the payment does not come in good time, you will be bankrupted by the same Government that talks about being committed to wealth creation and the welfare of her business people. So, that is one damage that pending bills create. Pending bills is also an avenue for making false claims. We know of contractors and suppliers of goods who, for one reason or another, do not supply any goods or services but who get listed as pending bills claimants. Such pending bills grow at a monstrous proportion. You may find a pending bill amounting to Kshs100 million. If you look at that pending bill in two subsequent years, you will find that the amount has grown to Kshs500 million. So, this country destroys her own entrepreneurs. Also, by having pending bills, we create a situation where corruption can be practised by both those people who pay and those who claim payment from the Government. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, accumulation of pending bills should be discouraged. Government Ministries and Departments should only be allowed to incur expenditure where budgetary arrangements have been made. Expenditures that are incurred without sufficient budgetary arrangements are the ones that occasion pending bills. You can see that the biggest culprit in terms of pending bills is, again, State House. So, if State House, which is supposed to prefect other Departments, is guilty of accumulating pending bills, I do not know what moral authority a guilty prefect would have to punish a perpetrator who should be supervised by the same prefect. You can see that more than ten Government departments are involved in this malpractice, and that the loss to the public is monumental. The public has become desperate and very fluid. I wonder how the business people, who were supposed to supply these Departments that have not paid them, have survived because the accumulated amount in respect of Pending Bills is colossal. If this amount is rightly owed to business people, the persons involved must be bankrupt by now. Again, if some of the corrupt activities are factored in, you can see what the public is losing by the existence of these very pending bills. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will find that during the year under review, Government departments did not surrender imprests. As you know, imprest that is not surrendered must be recovered. If it is not recovered, that amounts to misappropriation or even theft of the specific amount involved. Again, the leading culprit in this area is State House. So, you can see that 4144 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES December 5, 2006 it is State House that has been leading in the mismanagement of the resources of this country and failing to account for them. No wonder, most of the representatives of State House are not here. Only a few officials were here. The Ministries that are supposed to have been supervised by State House, and the Office of the President, which did not surrender imprests, are more than ten. The same argument arises: You have no moral authority to right such wrong if you are also a perpetrator of the same. We have, time and again, in this House, even before the current Session, talked about making public, proceedings of the Public Accounts Committee and those of the entire Parliament. The continued hearing of evidence in camera has made it very difficult to deter those involved. They know that we will talk within the confines of this House. The Press will selectively publish what they think is newsworthy and, perhaps, make a few sensational comments but they will be somewhere laughing to their banks, where they have stashed money that belongs to the public. So, the issue of making public the hearings of the Committees of this House, including the Public Accounts Committee, is important. Doing so would be in line with the constitutional duty of this House of keeping the Government accountable on the Budget that we approve. If the public, whose attention both sides of the House compete for, are unable to access information from this House to know who is not doing what or who is sleeping on which job, the concept of public accountability is blurred and obscured Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this House has many Reports that have not been implemented. Just have a look at the Front Bench on the Government side. There is nobody listening. Even the Minister for East African Community is withdrawing from the Chamber. I do not know who is representing the Government. So, there is nobody listening to what we are saying. We expect nobody to implement what is being done here. Perhaps it would be important in future, to give this House some sanctions over the Government; not sanctions of a political kind but sanctions of a kind that can lead to Government taking seriously the work of Parliament. For example, there are officers who have perpetrated these ills against the public, and the Executive is allowed to appoint them and re-appoint them single-handedly. If this House has the power to remove the President from office for sleeping on his job, why can it not acquire powers to decline the appointment of such persons, or remove those persons for misusing their offices? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to conclude by saying that this House, by passing the previous Reports and discussing and hopefully passing this particular one, has discharged its obligation to the public. What remains is for the Executive to discharge her obligation to the public by righting these wrongs against the taxpayers. Thank you very much."
}