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{
    "id": 281407,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/281407/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 273,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Ethuro",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 158,
        "legal_name": "Ekwee David Ethuro",
        "slug": "ekwee-ethuro"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I appreciate the stage at which the Government wants to prosecute business, but we have a constitutional duty to speak to some of these things. If you look at the Constitution, the Supplementary Appropriation Bill, Article 223, Mr. Mbadi has spoken to the issue of time. According to this Constitution, the Government should explain; bring the Supplementary Appropriation Bill after two months of incurring expenditure. I want him to tell us when that happened. Article 223(5) says: “In any particular financial year, the national Government may not spend under this Article more than ten per cent of the sum appropriated by Parliament for that financial year unless, in special circumstances, Parliament has approved a higher percentage.” This Parliament has a Budget Office. We are not dealing with rocket science. We have determined variations of expenditure. If you look at the expenditure of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Government has overspent by 32.4 per cent. On the Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs, it has overspent by 40.92 per cent; that is almost 50 per cent. The idea why we were putting a variation of not more than 10 per cent is that the Government was already planning and knew what it was planning to spend on. Now, when you go beyond that percentage--- The Constitution allows, in fact, in different circumstances, we would have acted differently. So, I am asking the Government to realize that we are a bit sympathetic. However, we are running out of sympathy for this Government, particularly when it comes to implementing the constitutional provision on the budgetary process."
}