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"id": 250655,
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"speaker_name": "Eng. Muriuki",
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"legal_name": "Muriuki Karue",
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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, my last substantive point is on the implementation process. As the Act stands now, we have a number of committees which are cumbersome and tend to have a parallel mandate. We have looked at that and our view is that the CDF Policy should be set up by Parliament and the Select Committee's role is to oversee the implementation of that policy. When a constituency wants to buy a piece of land, we shall pass it and they will buy. But before the cheque is issued, they are told to remove the item of the land because they do not think it is a good idea. Some other constituencies say they want to build tea collection centre or some such community project. It goes to the National Management Committee and they return it saying they do not think it is a good idea. When we engage the National Management Committee as to why they are saying so, they say part of their mandate is prudent management of the committee. The argument that has come is, we want to distinguish prudent management from prudent decisions as to what they want to do with their money. Mr. Speaker, Sir, when we talk about policy, we expect that the body which is given the mandate for the disbursement does not also come up with its own policy. For example, recently, we ended up with a situation where some people started calling us from around the constituencies asking us who are these people called regional managers. I had not heard of it, it had not come to this House, and it had not even come to the committee for information. It is for this reason, therefore, that it is our considered view that we should be having a CDF Secretariat composed of professional persons, rather than another parallel body made up of persons like the hon. Members who make their own policies. We went ahead to even suggest the sort of persons who we thought should be in this CDF Secretariat, so that we have an officer administering the fund, an accountant, a finance officer, a legal officer, aproject management officer, an information technology officer, a public relations officer, an internal auditor and maybe, one or two other persons selected by the Minister concerned. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we also considered that if we had such a Secretariat which will be doing the day-to-day administration of the Fund, then the administration that is done in Parliament should be given to that Secretariat. So, we debated among ourselves as to where this Select Committee should be housed. We looked at Parliament and we thought it is the wrong place because they are implementors. We looked at the Ministry of Finance where, at the moment, the National Management Committee is located. What tends to happen is that when they sit on something and they make a resolution, then they have to report to the Ministry of Finance. It so happens that the Chairman of that Committee is also the Permanent Secretary for Finance, and so it is like reporting to himself. It is for this reason, therefore, that we suggested that this CDF Secretariat be put under one of the line Ministries. In this case, we suggested that it be situated in the Ministry dealing with matters relating to regional development. This is a good scenario and---"
}