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{
    "id": 516144,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/516144/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 68,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Musyimi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 95,
        "legal_name": "Mutava Musyimi",
        "slug": "mutava-musyimi"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Members will recall in the Budget reading that year, by the Cabinet Secretary(CS) in the National Treasury, we had a couple seated up there as guests of the Committee. We had Mohammed and Zainab. We had brought them here from Isiolo because they are young people we met. Mohammed was the chairman of the hawkers in Isiolo. We met him during the public hearings. As we listened to everybody, people were concerned about the killer bridge. For that financial year, we set aside Kshs200 million. For the following year, we went round. I chose to go to Homa Bay and the other Members of the Committee went to the other 12 counties. We went to Rusinga, the causeway that connects the mainland to Rusinga Island because there were problems that the production of fish was beginning to incur because of the flow of water that the causeway had hampered. We saw the bridge that was being built by the Chinese. We went to Tom Mboya Memorial and we were told about Road C210 that moves from Mbita to Nyatike that was being tarmacked, but had stopped. We were told about the problem of the fishermen with respect to security on Rusinga and Mfangano islands. I personally called the OCPD of Mbita to assure me that, indeed, that problem was there. He told me it would help if we can do something about security provided by the boats. What point do I want to make? We came back and we sought the advice of the Parliamentary Budget Office. We are professionals in our own right. We are not just politicians. We asked the Parliamentary Budget Office: “What do we do? We have just come from Isiolo. We have gone to the House and placed an amendment to the Budget amounting to Kshs200 million.” The advice we got was that we should have, at least, Kshs3 billion for public hearings for the places that you go to. Otherwise, public hearings make no sense. So, we took the advice of the Director herself. She was sitting next to me. These are not ideas that we have pulled out of the rut. We have sought professional advice on this matter. May I also add that we are, at the moment, still dealing with ceilings. We have not come to the appropriations stage. We have not come to the Estimates. We are not even done with the public hearings. We are yet to listen to the public here in Nairobi. What do I mean by that? We have been to Nairobi before but we realized that every time we went to the KICC, it was Government agencies that came to have a second bite at the cherry; to try and lobby us to give them more money. Parastatals and other institutions came. So we said that this time round, we will go to constituencies. The point that I want to make is this: The public hearings for 2015/2016 are not yet over. We cannot table any report here because we have not completed that process. When we complete that process, we will table that report alongside the Estimates. You were quite right in reminding us, as you have sought to do, that we are still dealing with ceilings. We have not come to the details because we are not dealing with the Estimates. May I also say that with respect to the projects that we recommend to this House, they are development projects. If we talk about putting money in the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC), there are things that we can put money in the PSC for. For example, I hope this will happen eventually, the Kshs1 billion for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is for the Senate. If you are talking about building a road or a bridge of Kshs200 million in Isiolo, that money needs to be factored in by the National Treasury and needs to find its way to the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. That is because 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."
}