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{
    "id": 461975,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/461975/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 200,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Musyimi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 95,
        "legal_name": "Mutava Musyimi",
        "slug": "mutava-musyimi"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Speaker, Sir. I think this honourable House is aware that my Committee is currently looking at the expenses of independent commissions which constitute a very major part of our national payroll and we will be reporting back to this House before too long. One of the things that one has learnt as we have listened to the independent commissions--- Without much time, we listen to the budgets from the different sectors of our Government including the current discussion as to what should go to the national Government and what should go to the county governments. That whole exercise has brought home one very key lesson. We have a culture, philosophy and an understanding that the Government is not a place you go to serve but it is a place where you go to make money. That is why the Government in its many ways has become a major employer and a major opportunity for creating wealth. That is a very dangerous culture. It is a self-defeating culture and it is suicidal culture. Where it will lead us, as a country, is a question we need to discuss very carefully. This is for the simple reason that we now know the wage bill has gone up. Once the wage bill goes up and the Recurrent Expenditure goes up, the amount of money available for development is less and less. Unless we want to become a nation that just talks and does not act, we need to make some fairly serious policy decisions and be prepared to implement them. That is why I support this Motion. Hon. Speaker, Sir, I have said it before and I will say it again; I remember last year or the year before when I was chairing the Departmental Committee on Lands and I met a senior person in one of our interventions. That was the gentleman then in charge of the Treasury. I remember asking him how much money goes to corruption and wastage and he kept quiet. Later on, he answered that we lose about a third of our total revenue to wastage, corruption and seepage."
}