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"speaker_name": "Mr. Marende",
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"legal_name": "Kenneth Otiato Marende",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this debate. First, I wish to associate myself with the concerns of His Excellency the President for addressing various national issues worrying Kenyans as captured in his Address to this House. However, it is important for us to note that it is necessary for the Government to walk the talk. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, listening to His Excellency the President when he opened this Session, he did, among other things, re-emphasise what appears to have become hackneyed platitudes. Anybody who has listened to His Excellency the President's Speech to this House over the past three years will agree with me that, every time, he tends to use the same words he used in his previous Speech, only perhaps, differently prefixed. For instance, His Excellency the President did remember to say, once again, perhaps for the fifth time: \"When we took over the Government---\". He also said: \"This Government aims to ensure that there is recovery of the economy.\" It ought to be noted that this Government has, in fact, been in power for the last three and a half years or so. Therefore, talk of \"taking over the Government\", should not be an issue any more. What the Government ought to be saying is what it has done since it formed the Government. The impression gathered from the kind of Speeches written for the President is that this Government wants to live in history. Kenyans are concerned about the present and the future. They do not want to dwell too much on the past. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President rightly noted that we want to see more efficiency in the performance of the Government, leading to conservation of resources and yet when it comes to action, we see very little being done. For instance, it was publicised as Government policy that there will be a reduction in Government spending, particularly with respect to usage of motor vehicles, so that Government Ministers and senior officers are restricted in their use of the number of vehicles for each of them. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are yet to see any action being taken in this regard, notwithstanding the hard reality, as contained in the Report of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights for the last quarter, which indicates that during the period starting January 2003 to September, 2004, the Government spent a whooping Kshs878 million to purchase vehicles for use by Ministers, Assistant Ministers and Permanent Secretaries. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are yet to see any reduction in the number of vehicles that are attached to Ministers. We still see various Ministers running around with main cars, chase cars and cars that carry their security personnel. We would like to see the Government move in, in earnest to make the necessary reduction. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, His Excellency the President rightly identified the plight of the youth by citing among other things that 70 per cent of the Kenyan population is comprised of persons who are under 30 years of age. Indeed, the youths in this country are getting desperate because they have been made to live on promises for far too long. When opportunities arise, the trend is that they are given to persons who are well into their retirement. Most of our parastatals now are headed by persons who are in their 70s or so. The only serious position that is occupied by a young person is that of the Government Spokesman which is occupied by Dr. Mutua. Apart from Dr. Mutua, we do not see any other young person in a position that is of significance in the Government. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, talking about efficiency in the Civil Service, it is going to be very difficult to get performance out of the public service generally, which includes parastatals, as long as we still have disparity in the remuneration of various cadres of workers. We want to see a situation where salaries are harmonised. At the moment, we see a difference that is April 5, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 357 not easy to explain. For example, a senior economist at the Treasury with a Masters Degree earns a salary that is hardly Kshs70,000 and yet an officer with the same qualifications employed by the Central Bank of Kenya earns five times the salary of the officer who works at the Treasury. We have a situation where Government officers are demoralised. This, obviously, will not be helped by the signing of the performance contracts. We need to see a deliberate policy that is translated into action where salaries are very urgently harmonised and rationalised. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, The President also expressed concern over what appears to be the creeping of a culture that is not very useful to this country, namely, that ethnicity seems to be finding its way in a lot of our establishments and, therefore, affecting the development of this country negatively. The Government, through its top leadership, must demonstrate that it is prepared to make ethnicity a thing of the past. It is not going to be good enough to give lip service alone to this matter. If you go to any given Ministry and find that the Minister comes from tribe A or B - and we should not shy away from this - if the Minister is a Kikuyu, the Permanent Secretary tends to be a Kikuyu, any other senior officers in that Ministry tend to be Kikuyu and the Managing Directors of parastatals in that Ministry will also be Kikuyus. This applies to all the Ministries."
}