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"id": 29217,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/29217/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mrs. Ngilu",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Water and Irrigation",
"speaker": {
"id": 111,
"legal_name": "Charity Kaluki Ngilu",
"slug": "charity-ngilu"
},
"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to support this Bill. In supporting this Bill, I must say that since we are going to create a new Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, we are doing so knowing that the Kenya Anti- Corruption Commission (KACC) has let us down. When we got elected and passed the Public Officers Ethics Act in 2003, we really expected that what Kenyans had wanted to ensure that corruption was dealt with was going to be done by KACC. Unfortunately, right from that time to this time when we have this new Director who I hope will be out of that office in the next few days, we have been let down. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I say so because unfortunately, a body that was formed to do a good job has been misused. It has been misused because we really expected that it was going to deal with grand corruption. Unfortunately, it has sometimes been used to settle political scores. I say this because when I was in charge of the Ministry of Health and I was doing a lot to reform the Ministry, I attended one meeting at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). As you know, all directors and those who attend get their per diem . I got Kshs7, 000. That is what Ringera sent his officers to come and investigate in my office. He was sent to write a statement on the Kshs7, 000; “We know you received Kshs7, 000”. I thought we had been let down. Today, we now are passing this law hoping that we are going to create a watertight law that will certainly ensure that what the body is supposed to do is done. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in doing so, we need to ensure that we educate our people. There has got to be certain values. It just cannot be us looking at what the top is doing. We need to start this thing from the village. You know that today if a motorist is stopped by a police officer, by the way even before the police officers says, “Stop and give something”, the motorist himself or herself is already looking for her handbag so that they can be let to go. We have to look at what the Act is saying and I am happy it is talking about creating awareness and educating. For me, this is where I think we need to start; to prevent, to educate, create awareness and make people know that they can get services without having to bribe or even to give anybody money. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when you look at this Act again, I am very happy that we all seem to be united that we are not going to allow the same body to investigate and prosecute because they can abuse those powers. If the current person who is sitting as the Director was going to be given those powers, I do not think there would be anybody sitting in this Parliament. This is a person who seems to be hell bent in ensuring that he is settling scores with people. I only learnt the other day that he also wanted to be in this House, unfortunately, he only got 236 votes. He could not make it. Therefore, we have got to be very careful how we deal with these people. When we put people in these offices, they have to be very closely monitored. I say so because if they are not properly and closely monitored, ensuring that they follow the terms of reference that we are going to give to them, they would do what we are seeing them doing. They have failed. I saw the current Director yesterday and realized that the whole world can see he was lying on what he was saying. He was saying that: “I was laying a trap”. When you lay a trap and you do not get a person, you lay again. You do not say that I now want to tell you what I was about to do. What kind of an investigator is that? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, coming back to my own issue in the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, I wrote a very good report to this Director that somebody was about to steal Kshs652 million from the Ministry and I sent documents for Kshs430 million. To date, he has not even written one letter asking them to come forward or even started investigations. So, the kind of person that we got last year hoping that he will be the right person was a big mistake for us. I do hope that this will not happen again as we pass this law and get the next person."
}