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"id": 430001,
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"speaker_name": "Hon. Ngong’o",
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"legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
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"content": "because we need to be efficient as a House, both in our Committees because when we sit in those Committees we use public resources. Even this House would be reluctant to debate two reports on the same matter. So, having the same members of the Executive appearing before more than one Committee to answer to the same queries is inefficiency in totality for our country. I do not advocate for that. Therefore, we need to find a way where this House shall not engage in the same matter more than once. I mean not more than one Committee should investigate the same matter. Regarding the mandates of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Public Investments Committee (PIC) and Departmental Committees, we need to address this in this context: One, we need to understand the origin of the PIC. If you go to other jurisdictions outside there, comparable in the Commonwealth, you will realize there is one watchdog committee. Sometimes you call it a postmortem committee and that is the PAC. Because there is heavy responsibility in the context of Kenya, it has so many parastatals, what we call public investments; we have almost over 300, it became necessary to split PAC to deal with accounts of Ministries and departments and leave the public investments to the PIC. Therefore, in my view, when you asked us to talk about examining and investigating, there is a marked difference. When you talk about examination and examining, the catch word there should be examining of records; examining financial records, commercial records and commercial practices. In so far as this PIC is examining records and financial documents relating to the affairs of public investments in this country, the PIC is perfectly in order. So, if there is a matter that has been raised and I would urge--- We should sometimes allow Committees to go for education tours. We go to countries out there. If you go to the House of Commons, for example, you need to find out how PIC in the House of Commons operates. They examine accounts and if there is any matter in the process of examining the accounts that requires further examination or investigations, then it should flow from the accounts. Therefore, if PIC was looking at a matter and that matter requires that you go to physically verify, for example, the expansion of airport in Mombasa, when you are looking at the accounts of the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA), then you will still go and do it. But when it comes to day to day running of the affairs of the Ministries and departments, we should leave that to Departmental Committees to discharge their duties. This afternoon, I was not a very happy Member of Parliament. Why? This is because some allegations have been made in this House. Even if those Members cannot be mentioned here, some action needs to be taken. Unless we are engaging in rumour mongering, if it is true that some of us and I say this because it came from the Leader of Majority Party and the Deputy Leader of Minority Party, this must be a very serious matter. I do not want to walk out there and be seen as someone who is rent-seeking. I would like to know who these are who are rent-seeking; who are making the reputation of Parliament to come down. If we cannot name them here, these are people or Members, whether Chairmen or not, who should be reported to the Powers and Privileges Committee so that we deal with this issue. It has been repeated. This is not the first Parliament talking about rent-seeking in this House. For how long are we going to talk about it and especially when it comes to the House leadership; the Leader of Majority Party has spoken to it and has been ably supported by my leader, the Deputy Leader of Minority Party. Therefore, I would urge that for this matter, you ask the Leader of The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}