Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 424559,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/424559/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 406,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Murungi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 93,
        "legal_name": "Kiraitu Murungi",
        "slug": "kiraitu-murungi"
    },
    "content": "We should not be petty by saying that he does not belong here or there. Let us look for a Committee which will be chaired by him, especially the watchdog Committees. He did very well regarding Governor Wambora’s case. We in the region took a low profile because we pass through Embu on our way home. But Sen. Boni Khalwale did the job for us. We are now thinking about how we are going to reconfigure the Committees. Therefore, I think that we should not worry too much. I was in Australia in December, thanks to the Senate, and we looked at both the New South Wales Senate and also the Senate at Canberra and how their committees were operating. We saw that many of the Committees had only seven members. Our Committees have nine Members and given that the quorum is three Members, surely, there is no reason why we cannot reduce the number of our Committee membership from nine to seven, so that we can give more people the opportunity to serve in those Committees. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also found that the committees have dual mandates. At one level, they took the legislative work very seriously, including analyzing of Bills which were coming before them and generating Bills. There was the second bit where they spend time meeting the people and listening to them. They do inquiries and all that. I think that our Committees have been focusing too much on handling memoranda which come and ignoring the legislative agenda of the Senate. I think that it is time that the Committees shared this time almost equally, so that the Senate can also be seen as a lawmaker – we are Parliament. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we expect to see some Bill coming from the Committee on National Security and Foreign Relations and several Bills from the Committee on Finance, Commerce and Economic Affairs. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I support this Motion."
}