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"id": 231584,
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"speaker_name": "Ms. Karua",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs",
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"legal_name": "Martha Wangari Karua",
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"content": " Yes, I am doing so, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, noting that my colleague is not here. I am doing so, in the spirit of collective responsibility. It is our intention to ensure that our accounts are up-to-date. But I would also ask the PAC to make sure that it is up-to-date itself. I want to observe that although we laid on the Table of the House, sometime in April, the Special Audit on the 18 Anglo Leasing-related contracts, other than one of them relating to passports which to date we have been given a report, the PAC has not come back on the other 17 contracts. There is need, therefore, for Parliament to pull up its socks. The Government has said \"yes\", it will put up its socks. Let us see Parliament doing the same. But we know that there is conflict of interest in this matter. We are auditing a period that those in the Opposition were in Government. So, we will find quite a number of people affected and mentioned. I know that it also happened to some on our side, but let us see people working selflessly. Where a Member of a Committee notices that what is being audited relates to him, he must declare his interest. There has been a trend in the Committees of the House where people fail to declare interest. If your business concern is trading with a company which has raised an issue to your Committee, it is imperative that you declare interest. We saw that kind of thing when taxation measures were being removed. It is our duty to raise with the Chair, when we know that there is conflict of interest. But we are urging the other hon. Members also to agree to be above board. I know that most of the Committees do good work, but an individual here or there, may without the knowledge of the rest of the Members of the Committee, introduce extraneous matters. This erodes the work of Parliament. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I agree that there is need for us to go through the Report with a toothcomb and ensure that officers who are still serving and are implicated in wrong-doing, explain themselves, and where necessary, are relieved of their duties. Otherwise, we are going to have these problems recurring from one year to the next. We, as Government, have taken certain measures. I admit that we have not finished the clean-up exercise. We seek the co-operation of this House because whenever people working in the Government try to clean up their Ministries, it is hon. Members of this very House, who rise and say that their communities are being finished. There is no community that acts in unison when only one of its members is given responsibility. It is that member who must account for their mistakes. I remember that recently, when the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) was doing its own internal clean up, it was hon. Members of this House who protested. When individuals are hired by the Government or companies, I have never heard of any hon. Member rising to say that his community has been over-employed. But when there is a clean up exercise, hon. Members are the first to claim that their community is being weeded out. Please, do not approbate and reprobate at the same time. Do not ask us to take action, as Government, and then block us when we take action. We, however, promise that we shall exercise responsibility, and even high handedness when we are doing the clean-up exercise. On outstanding imprests, I want to say that this practice has totally been discouraged. Wherever it occurs, it is dealt with immediately. We cannot say that it will never recur. Human nature is such that people can become dubious, and can do things that are expressly forbidden. Our duty is to ensure that we redress such cases when they occur. I want to agree with the hon. Member who rose on a point of order on the issue of pending bills. This Government is on record as having tackled the issue of pending bills very swiftly. We continue to subject any pending bills that resurface to the Pending Bills Closing Committee, which is doing some very good work, and is saving the Government money. There are many other areas that we need to address and we are addressing them. I want hon. Members to know that reform is a process; it is not a one-off event. We have to work together, the December 5, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4149 Government, hon. Members of this House and the citizens of this country. We have to work collectively to weed out bad practices and corruption, and to ensure that we plug all the holes where our revenue is disappearing through. I, therefore, want to commend the report and urge Parliament to act swiftly. All audit reports that are ready should be tabled in this House, so that we approve and implement them, and move forward. In the areas which the Government has already covered, we shall again check them to see what more we can do. What we have not covered and is recommended, we shall look at it and implement the recommendations of the Committee as appropriate. With those many remarks, I beg to support."
}