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{
    "id": 539710,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/539710/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 128,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ogolla",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1264,
        "legal_name": "Gideon Ochanda Ogolla",
        "slug": "gideon-ochanda-ogolla"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. The law is an obligation placed on us by the Constitution. It is important that we look at it in a very serious way. Beyond that, it is one of the ways of how we can clearly benefit from the whole set of the Bill of Rights that is in the Constitution. It has a background in terms of experiences that we had in the past particularly in terms of service delivery and the relationship between the Government and the citizens. This has been an exercise for some time. The Government has been distancing itself from the public unaware to an extent that citizens were complaining in terms of service delivery. The law, in my view, has limited the element of post mortal action to look at administrative actions as they happen. This is one of the many advantages that this law has brought around, that you do not wait to complain after things have happened. You can complain on the spot. In terms of looking for how some of the issues can be addressed on the spot, it has widened the scope to the extent that you can engage the administrators themselves. You can engage the commission, courts and the tribunal. It has widened areas and players that can be approached in terms of when either a right is denied or a right is getting delayed. We have had many problems before in terms of even issues of pension alone. It is something that one had worked for but getting pension, if you look at the past records of Parliament, the number of Questions that were raised on people whose pensions were delayed or pensions could not be traced, they were all over. This is the time that this kind of law now becomes very appropriate and I want to believe that it is going to help the country in a big way. However, there are things that in view really need to be looked at in the Bill, how we can amend it and stuff like that. There is the individual and normally the communal individual. There has been this problem in the past where trustees of the people engage in actions that in the end harm people or are not very clear in the end. You want to look at for example, what the local authorities used to do before. There is the issue of Tiomin and the Yala swamp. Many of them are related to commitments that councils engaged in without the councils themselves engaging the communities. So the councils were acting on behalf of the communities but the communities did not know exactly the actions that the councils were taking to an extent that you get the councils engaging in contractual obligations that in the end harm the communities. So, this is one area where we want to look at this legislation now. To what extent would we want to address those kinds of issues that had happened before? To what extent are we able to get back in terms of date of how to effect the kind of provision that we now have in the Bill? In Yala swamp like I had mentioned, Bondo and Siaya county councils engaged in the Dominion Group of Companies. In the process, they got into a lot of contractual obligations but did not inform the communities adequately. In the end 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."
}