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{
    "id": 742862,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/742862/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 252,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Keynan",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 41,
        "legal_name": "Adan Wehliye Keynan",
        "slug": "adan-keynan"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I take this opportunity to thank all the Members who have contributed to this important Report. The parastatal sector is the engine to realising meaningful development and industrial take-off. Without this sector being properly and efficiently run, we will continue to have many sectors of our economy ailing thus lagging behind in sphere of development. There are a number of parastatals that have, over the years, been making huge losses at the expense of taxpayers. When we interrogated this, we realised that the Government also contributes to some of the challenges that parastatals are faced with. The appointment of CEOs is at times not done professionally or ethically. If you want a professional entity or quasi Government agency to be run competently, the best you can do is to hire a competent and highly qualified CEO regardless of his or her ethnic, political, or regional affiliations. I remember in 1997 when I was first elected, I was appointed to the Departmental Committee on Finance, Planning and Trade. The first benchmarking tour we made was to Malaysia. At that time, I was a very young legislator and was very excited to hear that Malaysia was one of the emerging great economies. I also learnt that there were other emerging great economies like Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and Hong Kong. I really wanted to know how they attained that status. I realised that they had adopted a policy of zero-tolerance to corruption. We are lacking in this policy. When we first visited Malaysia, we concentrated on investments by Government- controlled parastatals. We had an opportunity to chat with a senior official from the Malaysian National Assembly. The first document that he gave us was one they had borrowed from Kenya in 1974. You can imagine the time lapse between 1974 and 1988. It is the same document they borrowed from us that they used to turn around their economy. It was at the time when Kenya was a donor nation. Kenya would make donations to South Korea and other struggling economies at that time. Over the years, we have been bragging that we are a regional economic hub, but that title is long gone. You only need to look at the recently released World Bank Economic Index where Ethiopia emerged as the biggest economic hub in East and Central Africa and also the Horn of Africa. That tag on us is no more. Four years ago, every business activity between Kenya and Tanzania was in the favour of Kenya, but in another two years, unless we change, Tanzania will be the economic hub of the East African Community (EAC). Why am I saying so? We do not take what we are doing seriously. We talk and we do not implement. In this sector, there has been serious mismanagement. Boards are not appointed on time and if they are appointed, cronies are appointed who do not have the requisite financial, technical and managerial expertise to run parastatals. In the process, they run them down. These fellows just appear for meetings to get allowances, create trips and so on. At the end of the day, an entity that was supposed to be profit- making degenerates into one of the most despised loss-making entity. Who contributed to this? It is the appointing authority who is the President, the CS, the PS or other corporate entities. I will give an example of the NSSF and compare it to its equivalent in Malaysia and Tanzania. The NSSF in Kenya is not the one we envisaged. This is not the NSSF that Kenyans wanted. This is a cash cow for the politically correct. If the NSSF was properly run, it would easily become one of the greatest Government agencies in terms of funding. Just look at what is 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."
}