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"id": 231907,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/231907/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kagwima",
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"speaker": {
"id": 286,
"legal_name": "Francis Nyamu Kagwima",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish to continue from where I left. Before the House was interrupted, I was saying that the reason we have these huge volumes of the Public Accounts Committee reports is because our Public Service is inefficient, among other things. I want to laud the fact that the Government has now entered into contracts with public servants. We need to ensure that at the end of those contracts, and I hope that most of them are annual, those who are requesting for renewed contracts have performed what they signed to perform. If our people worked well, we would reduce the queries that the Controller and Auditor- General has, over the years, raised. It has become a routine for us to adopt the reports of the PAC. In all these years, we have recommended that action be taken. We need to be very serious about the efficiency of public servants. Even as we recruit new employees, we should take into account the fact that the Public Service is even at times more important than the private sector where we are talking about small companies or individuals making profit. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at the money that we are talking about, you will find that it is enormous. We only talk and nothing happens. I would like to request this House to put mechanisms in place to ensure that actions are taken on the recommendations of the PAC. It does not really pay anything for the Committee to sit for many hours. First, the Controller and Auditor-General queries the anomalies that have been committed, the PAC sits for lengthy hours, looks at the accounts and recommends that action be taken. Both of them spend public money going through the anomalies. Finally, the Report of the PAC comes to the House, we adopt it and put it on the shelves. This is a further waste of public money. I am appealing to the House to see whether we can force the Government to take action on the recommendations of the Committee rather than just adopt the reports and keep them on the shelves. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said that, we also need to look at another cause of misappropriation of public funds. We have the animal called corruption. We have been singing in the House and outside about fighting corruption, but I am not sure we are making a lot of progress. We are not making a lot of progress because the issues which have been raised in this Report are being repeated even as we are talking against corruption. I thought that the NARC Government started well by bringing the Public Officer Ethics Bill for enactment by this House. This Act, among other things, barred public officers from presiding over Harambees. The Act is there and public servants are back on the Harambees. First, we are breaking the law and secondly, we are encouraging corruption in the name of Harambees. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am looking at a situation where a senior public officer, like a Permanent Secretary or even an hon. Member, is invited to a Harambee and even his opponents are invited. Of course, there will some kind of competition. In Harambees, you look out for your friends or anybody else who can support you, including contractors who may be working in your constituency. Because of the pressure, one will be forced to invite those contractors and, of course, they will respond because they want some favours. Once that has been done, the fear that the contractor had over the leaders, whether it is the Permanent Secretary, the Minister or the hon. Member, disappears and the contractor will think that he has bought his certificate of savings and making huge profits. That again erodes the position that we are holding; that we should use to ensure that people get service for their money. It is in my considered opinion that we should re-look at the Public Officer Ethics Act to see whether it requires some amendments. I have been involved in Harambees for a long time, but this 4102 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 30, 2006 time round, I am looking at them as one possible cause of corruption. When a Minister presides over a Harambee, people who are seeking favours from him will attend. Whoever comes to assist you is your friend. I think we need to look at this Act again. I would like to encourage the growth of the co-operative movement, so that when people want to access money for personal or family use, they can borrow money from the societies and pay with ease at very low interest rates. The other way of doing this is by encouraging merry-go- rounds like women do. That way, one will even get money without having to pay interest. Those are the kinds of things that we need to encourage, so that people can access money conveniently without having to be forced to be corrupt. The other thing that I want to mention is the timing of bringing the reports to the House, which I also mentioned yesterday. The timing is very bad. The Report we are looking at is for the year 1998/99, which is about seven years ago. Even if we are making recommendations and let me assume that action is taken, that action will be overtaken by time if we are trying to recover. Seven years is a whole world of difference. One may have passed away or even acquired more positions to protect himself. We need to equip the Controller and Auditor-General properly so that he can catch up and bring the reports up to date. We should be, at the worst, two years behind. However, we are now talking about seven years ago. That is what we are recommending for action to be taken. Seven years ago, some of the people we may be blaming are probably in the House and in the position of protecting themselves. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue I want to mention is about the coverage of the Report. Looking at it, surprisingly, almost all Government Ministries and departments are in the Report. So when you look at it and try to compare it in terms of efficiency, what efficiency is there if we are saying that 98 per cent of the Ministries and departments are mentioned? We are saying that we are not efficient! If we are operating at below 10 per cent efficiency, then we are cheating ourselves that we will improve our economy through the Vision 2030 unless we change, as a society. We need to take a stand, as a society of Kenya and say: \"Yes, we have gone through this over the years. We have suffered enough, so we must stop it. So, we need to improve our morals and preach against corruption just like preachers do in church.\" If we improve on our efficiency, then we will be sure that our economy will grow at whatever level we are projecting, whether 10 per cent or more. However, so long as we continue worshipping wealth, we are just nourishing corruption. I am sure we are familiar with cases where people get access to money corruptly and use the same to go to the villages where people worship them. They also use the same wealth to take them to Parliament just because they are able to offer a drink or some cash. Even if those people are elected to represent their people in Parliament or the local authorities, they will not change. Probably, they will go to enhance what they were doing out there. So, I also want to appeal to the public to be sure of the people they want to trust in positions of leadership by electing or nominating people of high moral integrity; people who have a call to duty in those areas that they want to serve the public. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said this, I want to end by saying that probably in the years to come, we will be seeing a smaller Report where we are talking about two or three Ministries that are left behind while other Ministries have improved and gone with the strength that they have served well and the accounts were up to date, and everything was done according to the Act, plan and the designs rather than having a Report covering the entire Ministries of the Government. So, this is the appeal I am making to the Kenyan public. The Ministers, the Permanent Secretaries, District Officers, chiefs and everybody else are all Kenyans. That is why I am appealing to the entire Kenyan society to change their attitudes. If we have good roads, water supply and electricity, we do not require that colossal amount of money that some of us may be keeping in overseas accounts. Why do you need it? How many years do you have to live to have November 30, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4103 billions stashed in overseas accounts? In any case, what are you fearing? What is anybody fearing investing the money in his own country if the money is acquired in the correct manner? I think we need to impose heavy penalties on anybody found having stashed money outside this country unless we say that he wanted to buy some property there. I think it is a major crime for the Kenyan community to stash money in foreign accounts when we are struggling to borrow money from the World Bank and other institutions. If that money was transferred to this country, our economy would grow and the exchange rate will come down so that we spend less buying foreign currency and we will be living in a better world. I think we should wake up and say: \"No to corruption and inefficiency\", so that this country can move ahead."
}