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{
    "id": 683485,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/683485/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 185,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Wandayi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2960,
        "legal_name": "James Opiyo Wandayi",
        "slug": "james-opiyo-wandayi"
    },
    "content": "If you want to look at this Report in the right context, you must understand that it is about the 2013/2014 Financial Year, which was the financial year that the current administration came into office. This is the first financial year under the Jubilee Administration. As we critic this Report, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is about a financial year when most of the so- called “grand projects” of the Jubilee Administration were initiated. I want to give examples. Hon. Speaker, you will recall that even the now infamous NYS scandal started way back in the 2013/2014 Financial Year. From the admission of none other than the Auditor-General himself, we are aware that this country lost a minimum of Kshs1.8 billion in that scandal alone. From where we sit, we believe a lot more was lost but the mere fact that there is an admission that they have lost a whopping Kshs1.8 billion in one scandal is a very serious indictment on ourselves as a country. Hon. Speaker, you will also agree with me that this is the financial year when other white elephant projects were conceived and initiated. One of them is the infamous Galana/Kulalu Irrigation Project. That single project was meant to put a minimum of one million acres under irrigation but four years down the line, only 2,000 acres have been done. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that it will take close to a quarter century for the one million acre target to be achieved. This is happening and yet money is being used every single day; money is being expended every day. The other white elephant project that was conceived in the 2013/2014 Financial Year is the subsidised fertiliser project. Why am I saying so? For the first time in the history of this country, the Government entered into an open ended contract with some briefcase suppliers of fertilisers to supply the important agricultural input every year without fixing the prices. That was one clear avenue for siphoning public funds. You can go on and on. Of late, we have heard about the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Project, which was also conceived around that time. The other day we were told that the SGR from Nairobi to Naivasha was not approved and yet we are aware that this project was launched by none other than the President and his Cabinet. We are now being told that, because some Maasai morans rioted and attacked the Chinese contractors undertaking the project around Naivasha, this phase of the project was not approved. What kind of Government can operate like this? Which contractor would put their tools on a project like the Nairobi-Naivasha SGR line without prior approval by the Government? You can go on and on and talk about the so-called 10,000 Kilometre Road Project that was supposed to have been done in five years. As we speak, in the county I come from, no single inch of tarmac has been laid. I am sure, that is the case in many other counties or constituencies and yet money is continuously being spent under the guise of implementing these grandiose projects. The kind of unprecedented theft we are witnessing in Government is happening both upstream and downstream. What do I mean by that? The theft is happening at the collection level of revenue at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA). It is also happening downstream at the expenditure level. This country is under siege. It is being bled to death under the watch of the Government. What we are basically doing here is a post mortem. We are doing what we call “an exercise in futility.” Four years down the line, we are talking about what was stolen in the 2013/2014 Financial Year. The stealing has continued unabated in the subsequent financial years. In fact, the magnitude of stealing has continued to increase every year. Only God knows what this country will be like 10 years down the line if nothing is done to change the current state of affairs."
}