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{
    "id": 381694,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/381694/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 41,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Kenyans are, if there are clear directives on accounting for harambee collections and reporting on the use of such collections. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I will give you a practical example. At one point, we had a harambee at the Professional Centre for a school in my constituency then and we raised a lot of money. We must have raised something like Kshs1.4 million. But the people who were keeping the accounts, the next day they were telling us that we only raised Kshs800, 000. Since we had very good records, we had to compel them to make sure that their records were in consonance with ours so that we do not abuse the collection from the people. That happened because when people raise these funds for all kinds of purposes, there is no standard methodology of accounting for such monies. There are no standard directives that everybody must follow, both for the sake of national statistics, but also for the sake of accounting for this money. Our present Constitution emphasizes accountability and transparency in all institutions. Indeed, even the Political Parties Act says very clearly that political parties must not encourage bribery. The Constitution itself says so. If we have enshrined these principles in our Constitution and our other laws, why should we allow a practice like harambee to spoil this spirit or to be carried outside the spirit of the Constitution? This Motion attempts to bring into proper legal practice and proper political culture, an initiative that emerged sometime ago in a very noble way, but an initiative which over time has been adulterated by poor practice and has been a culprit of corruption. Once we do this, we will reduce corruption in the Civil Service, because civil servants also, like us, are intimidated quite often for this kind of thing. I know some of you know that sometime ago, a very high placed official in our society who was in an institution that was fighting corruption on this kind of harambee thing was somehow caught with his pants down. It was not a very good experience, but again you have to understand that he like any other person, was under pressure to contribute something to his community or to his friends and so on, on this harambee basis, thereby he was tempted to use that office to quietly coerce people to make contributions. It is not good. I think we are demeaning ourselves. If we can come to a situation where the thing is properly done; openly, in a straightforward and legal way, I think it will be acceptable. Mr. Speaker, Sir, finally, I have proposed that we establish a Select Committee - the names are there and, of course, there can be amendments to that; the more the merrier – to prepare a Bill because my aim really is to put this thing in law. I am sure that there are so many practices elsewhere; we have model laws and so on, that if we put it into law by this Senate, we will have gone a long way to do this thing practically rather than just requesting the Government to do something appropriate, so that the things I have enumerated here are done. My proposal is that we do it ourselves; we produce a Bill which will become part of the laws of Kenya and which from now on will make harambee a much more noble initiative than what it is at the moment. I beg to move and to request Sen. Wetangula to second."
}