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{
    "id": 622824,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/622824/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 245,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Eng.) Gumbo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 24,
        "legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
        "slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
    },
    "content": "million. How on earth would I be able to put up a house worth hundreds of millions of shillings, dig a personal borehole and put up a stand-by generator while boasting all over the place, behaving as if I am itching to spend cash? This aspect of prudent and efficient spending of public funds must be included in the Bill. I will propose an amendment introducing an element of policing, which I will encourage the House to carry through. Hon. Deputy Speaker, it is not just the reports of the Controller of Budget, but we have very many useful reports in this Constitution. I have spoken to this matter before. The Constitution obligates constitutional offices to be giving Parliament reports at certain times. Are these mere rituals or is Parliament supposed to be seized of these reports once they are brought here? I was personally very embarrassed when a report that my Committee did tended to say that a constitutional office had not submitted a report yet the reason we did that was because the report had been given a year before, but there was no provision for it to be debated. Therefore, overtime, because issues come, we were not seized of the fact that the report was there. We all cannot be tracking all the reports that come to the House on a daily basis. In agreeing with my colleague, Hon. Ochieng, if the Constitution gives a constitutional office a timeline for submitting reports, Parliament must be obligated to debate that report. Hon. Deputy Speaker, there are a lot of issues that the Controller of Budget highlights in her quarterly report and some of these issues come up. Maybe a newspaper or two will highlight them, but another issue comes up and they are forgotten. The reason the Constitution demands that these reports be brought to the House at a certain time is so that they can form policy and improve our governance structure. I have looked at Clause 9 and sometimes I get concerned as a Kenyan. Why we sometimes say that the law is blind is not that we will only accept that aspect of the law which conforms to the way we want things done. Clause 9 provides that in making appointments in terms of Section (1), the Controller of Budget shall be guided by Articles 27 and 232 of the Constitution. Article 232 is about equality of Kenyans, but it leaves out a very important provision of the Constitution, namely, Article 251(2)(c) which says that all constitutional offices shall be responsible for appointing their own staff. Why are we timid in not talking about this? I am glad that there is an improvement over what we did for the Public Audit Bill, so that when we come to amendments, we should bring in this so that we move this important office forward. I support."
}