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"id": 254813,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Muite",
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"speaker": {
"id": 235,
"legal_name": "Paul Kibugi Muite",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. When the President was giving his Speech, he touched on an important issue, namely that, in the Fourth Session, this House was only able to enact seven Bills out of 25 Bills. The President went on to give a long list of Bills that the Government intends to place before this House. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, our core business, as a House, is legislation; enacting Bills into Acts of Parliament. Therefore, there is a major question mark as to how, out of 25 Bills, we can succeed to enact seven Bills only. We stand judged and accused. I would like to say that we need to evaluate the way in which we do business as a House, so as to maximize efficiency. It is unacceptable that we can only enact seven out of 25 Bills. So, we need to re-examine and re- evaluate ourselves, and ask ourselves: What can we do as a House in order to increase efficiency? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when you find a lot of us, the Member for Kabete included, contributing to Bills before the House, hardly do we contribute to the merits or demerits of the contents of the Bill! We use the Bill as a forum to articulate other issues of public importance and concern rather than engaging in the contents of the Bill. This cannot be right! Why does that happen? It happens because of the way we do business in this House. I would suggest that we re-examine ourselves. The Government and the Attorney-General's Chamber should engage the Committees involved in the various Bills. We should not wait to commit the Bill to the relevant Departmental Committee after the First Reading. That involvement should be during the generation of the Bill in the Attorney-General's Chamber, or even from the relevant parent Ministry, so that the relevant Departmental Committee, in terms of its membership, can, first and foremost, become confidently conversant with the contents of the Bill. That Departmental Committee can then have the opportunity of engaging stakeholders who are going to be affected by that particular Bill. We now need to be sensitive about the consumers of the Bills that we are enacting. The various stakeholders need to be given an opportunity by those Departmental Committees to input on the Bill. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if a Departmental Committee is conversant with the contents of the Bill, it will come to this House and it will lead the discussion, because sometimes the Bills are of a very technical nature. One of the Bills that have been distributed, because it has been published, is the Maritime Bill. This is a technical subject. So, how are we, hon. Members, who lack adequate support staff, going to get conversant with this technical Bill? Yet, if there is engagement of the relevant Departmental Committee when the Bill is being generated, it will itself even gain access to experts so that they become fully confident about the contents of that Bill. Therefore, when we come to the House, the Departmental Committee concerned can lead the other hon. Members. Once we know that, that Committee has been with this view throughout, after consulting the stakeholders, we will then be able to go along with the recommendations of the Committee. I am not suggesting that hon. Members should not contribute to the Bill. They will still contribute, but we will be able to guide them into disciplined contributions. We shall not allow hon. Members to stray away from the use of the time allocated to the Bill to bring in other issues. We must examine our Standing Orders. Standing Orders need to be facilitative of the Business of this House and not obstructive. Despite this, we have got a situation whereby the Standing Orders Committee has not met for well over a year. That Committee needs to be called April 4, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 311 very quickly. We need to re-examine those Standing Orders. We need a complete overhaul of those Standing Orders, so that they can help us to expedite Business in this House. If some of these measures were to be taken, I foresee a situation where a Bill would not take more than two to three days. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other reason why hon. Members use the forum of debate on a Bill to debate other public issues is because, when we bring Motions on very important issues, it is accorded only two hours; the Mover 20 minutes, the Seconder 20 minutes and the Official Responder 20 minutes. There is very little time left for debate. We need to re-examine our Standing Orders so that all matters of public policy, that can be handled through Motions, are given adequate time. If we were to bring a Motion here tomorrow about these electronic cash registers, two hours would not be adequate for it. If you were to give Members of Parliament adequate time to voice their concerns, then when other Bills come to the House they would be confined to the merits and demerits of the contents of those Bills. So, let us re-examine the way we conduct business in this House. Let us re-examine the Standing Orders and overhaul them so as to ensure that they are facilitative. In this age of transparency, how can we be talking about permitting live coverage of the proceedings of this House, but in the same vein we are saying that the proceedings of Committees must be in camera? The public wants to follow these proceedings. Those Standing Orders need to be repealed and amended or updated them in this age of transparency. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to comment about forensic laboratories. I hope that Mr. Michuki is listening to this contribution. We have a situation whereby we get frightened as a nation because an issue has become controversial. We also get frightened because the donor community and the World Bank have talked about the forensic laboratories contract. As a result, we forget our priorities. Why does this Government not see that the priority in this country today is insecurity? How many women and children are raped on a daily basis? Our major priority as Kenyans is to have a forensic laboratory. We cannot expect police officers to cope with crime unless we equip them with a forensic laboratory. When people mug, carjack, rape or commit robbery with violence, they will definitely leave their DNA there. If the police had a forensic laboratory that DNA would be collected. It may take long to track down the criminals, but in the end they will be caught using their DNA. We should not get frightened because somebody somewhere inflated the previous contract. That is agenda item number two. We should have gone ahead to build these forensic laboratories so as to cope with crime. From there onwards, we can investigate to find out whether the contract was inflated or if somebody wanted to get some money. Mr. Michuki should have had a forensic laboratory built in this country for the police yesterday and not tomorrow. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we want to be seen to be taking people to court. Kenyans have seen this fanfare of collecting people of high profile and taking them to court. You are not doing anything new by rushing people to court. Kenyans want a thoroughly investigated and prepared case so that there is adequate evidence. This will ensure that when people are taken to court, we are sure of getting a conviction. So, do not be in a rush to go to court with half-baked investigations because somebody is purely high profiled or simply because you want newspaper headlines. You will get your headline but you are actually destroying the credibility of the investigatory agency, the prosecutorial agency or the Government. Let us not have another round of fanfare, headlines and rushing people to court without any hope of getting those people convicted. We should go slowly, investigate and prepare for cases thoroughly so that we will get convictions in every eight out of ten cases when we go to court. I beg to support."
}