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"speaker_name": "Mr. Muturi",
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"legal_name": "Justin Bedan Njoka Muturi",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to also play my part in this ritual. As you know, the Budget is before us because our rules are that before 26th of June we must give the Government half of the money that is required for the financial year. Looking through the Estimates, I am unable to understand where the priorities of the Government are. For example, a whooping Kshs5.98 billion has been allocated to the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) for the entire financial year, which is more than the money that has been allocated to the National Assembly, which is Kshs4.4 billion, and yet if you go out there, the National Assembly is where there is extravagance. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the NSIS is supposed to be telling us when brothers come from countries that have been variously described as Armenia, Czech and others, and when they come in, where they live and visit from time to time after 6.00 p.m. As we have heard, they June 22, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1581 have a habit of visiting various places including raiding television stations. Kshs5.98 billion! What is there for NSIS to show? Should we be having this issue about hooded goons; people alleged to be travelling even in jets and yet NSIS is nowhere to tell us who they are? The Ministry of Water and Irrigation headed by my good friend, John Mutua Katuku, does not get anywhere near what NSIS is getting. It is for that reason that I am wondering where our priorities are. This leads me to this feeling: When the colonial Government arrived in Kenya and built the railway line, it hived off a radius of 100 kilometres or thereabouts which they considered \"useful Kenya\", and the rest appears to have been defined as \"useless Kenya\". I think successful governments appeared to have followed suit. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we all know that the largest part of this country is without water and yet we have enough water resources in the country. Why is it so? We have a Ministry of Planning and National Development. Is it that it cannot plan to give hon. Katuku enough money to provide Kenyans with water? Like the rest of the world, we keep singing \"water is life\". How can we say water is life and we are not providing it to the majority of Kenyans? Why is it that there is very little money allocated to the ASAL areas? Even as we vote for this Motion, we know that last year, of the Kshs1.5 billion that had been set aside for water in the ASAL areas, only Kshs800 million was spent. The rest, as we all know, was withdrawn during the Supplementary Estimates; Kshs531 million was removed, and another Kshs300 million was also mysteriously transferred to other places. It begs the question: Since we give the Government half of the allocation that they require, are we going to see movement in the direction which is going to promote growth in the country? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when you look at the allocations for the Kenya Anti- Corruption Commission (KACC), Judiciary and the State Law Office against the background of how many high profile corruption related cases are pending in our courts, you wonder what this money does. Is it that our judges and magistrates are on a go-slow? If you look at the report that was tabled earlier this year by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the infamous Anglo Leasing, they were given 60 days to take action but they have not done it. By this House adopting that report which gave the investigative arm 60 days within which to bring the report of action taken, we wanted KACC to take action. What are we seeing? Nothing! We are just allocating money to it for nothing. There is no action. We are not seeing any report. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at the Value Added Tax (VAT) Department in the Ministry of Finance, I am happy that it has proposed to increase the amount of monthly VAT refunds to Kshs900 million. Again, here we are in a very interesting position in that priority will be given to those that are Electronic Tax Registers (ETR) compliant and yet there is a dispute pending in the High Court about the same issue of the ETRs. It seems like the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you have just heard here a Minister saying that we should go to their offices and beg. I think that is a very interesting way of developing because I expect the Government to have planned and factored development in all areas to the extent that we do not have to go kneeling before anybody pleading for assistance."
}