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{
    "id": 507882,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/507882/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 341,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mulu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1955,
        "legal_name": "Benson Makali Mulu",
        "slug": "benson-makali-mulu"
    },
    "content": "backwards with that CEO and clear all the reports? This is because when you look at the findings, they are all the same. Actually, I sympathize with our Public Investments Committee (PIC). I am worried that we may be here discussing a report of a CEO who retired about five or six years ago and because our life expectancy is not very high, that character might even have died. Then you ask yourself: Why are we discussing a recommendation saying “prosecute this character”, who is already somewhere in a grave? What do you do as the Chair? You get very frustrated. We need to seriously think of how we can make these reports add value to us as a country. I think we have some lessons to learn when we read these reports. One of the things is what happens with the budgeting process. You realize that as we award resources to those parastatals, it is just a one line item in most cases. We say a grant of Kshs.3 billion or a grant of Kshs.100 million. We really do not take time to look at how we are going to use that money in terms of investments. I think it should be very clear to Kenyans what kind of investments are going to be done using the resources we are allocating to the parastatals. In that case, we will be able to interrogate whether the investments which are going to be undertaken will actually help this country grow. Generally, if you invest, you expect to make more money or make more income in terms of what you are doing and then you grow. I do not think we are realizing that. I think we need to start by asking hard questions like: If we are giving a parastatal Kshs.100million and it is supposed to invest, how much of that money is going to recurrent expenditure? That is because if you are given Kshs.100million and you find that Kshs.90 million is going to recurrent, why should that institution not be scrapped? That is why I want to support the idea of the reforms that have just been proposed by PIC. It is now the right time to consider some of the reforms and implement them in our parastatals. That way, parastatals that are not making any contribution in terms of improving the lives of Kenyans can actually be done away with or merged. We should remain with a few parastatals that are really contributing to our economic growth. The other thing we need to realize is worshipping corruption. I think Kenyans also need to rise to the occasion because most of them believe that when you are made a CEO of a parastatal and you leave that parastatal not as excessively rich but as what I will call reasonably rich and you go to your rural area, they will start pointing at you saying: “Look at this bagger. We gave him a very good position and he has come home a poor man.” In that case, what are we telling those CEOs? We are telling them that any time you get a public appointment it is your time to “eat”. That is why you see that when those people go there, they loot the institutions and, by the time they come out, the corporations are actually collapsing. So, even as Kenyans, it is high time we started questioning how people are accumulating their wealth because that is also affecting our politics. If you come to the rural setting and you have money that you are dishing out to people every day, people will start calling you a hero. They do not ask a hard question like: How have you made your money? I am imagining Kenyans asking the hard question: “How have you made your money?” In that situation we will ask you: “Can you tell us how you accumulated your wealth because you were employed this month or year, you have worked for ten years and we can analyze your salary for the ten years and yet, you are 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."
}