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"content": "“A petition to Parliament for the alteration of the boundary of a county may be made by —” So, it appears you can only bring a petition where you want to make a change in the boundary. What if you are asserting the boundary is yet to be ascertained? Can you use this provision to move the jurisdiction of that entity? Therefore, it needs to be phrased in such a manner that if you want to change or where you are doubtful as to the certainty of a boundary, for example, that dispute in Murang’a County. That way, one can move the petition under this clause. Otherwise, one may say no, this is where you want to change. Where the boundary is known, that should be it. So, you need to recast your wording here so that those who are yet to ascertain the boundary probably, they can use this clause to raise it. Madam Temporary Speaker, my main worry - and this is where I object to this Bill - is the issue of proposing to establish a commission whose only work will be to check these issues of the boundary. My good friend, Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. has dedicated a whole part. Part V ─ Establishment, Powers and Functions of an Independent County Boundaries Commission. It has several clauses from Clauses 24, 25, 26, 27 up to Clause 38. Surely, this country does not need any other commission. By the way, this commission will be so idle. You will find its commissioners going to Malaysia, Tanzania and America for benchmarking. They will be saying: “Hey, there is a boundary dispute between this and that place”, then they go to check. We do not want a huge Government. If this country is to grow, we need to reduce our bureaucracy. We need to have lean institutions. One way of checking that is to ensure we, as parliamentarians; do not keep on creating several commissions. The functions of this proposed Commission can easily be undertaken by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). In fact, if you look at its name, it means Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Therefore, you can take all these ideas and revise the IEBC Act by incorporating all this functions in the Act. The IEBC is one of the idle commissions we have in this country. Immediately after elections, they are usually idle. Like now, what are they doing? I know they are now busy prosecuting petitions which is good, but immediately after these circus of petitions, they will be idle. If you visit an IEBC official in your constituency next year, most likely, he or she will be reporting to the office at about 10.00a.m. and when it reaches 3.00 p.m., he or she will be at home because there will be no work. So, we need to give the IEBC work. I wish this Bill was proposing to amend the IEBC Act - we would expand the jurisdiction of IEBC to handle what this Bill is proposing to give to this County Boundaries Commission. It will be an idle commission and a drain to the taxpayers. We want to focus as a country on the so-called “Agenda Four” that has been clearly explained by His Excellency President Uhuru Kenyatta. In the Agenda Four pillars, one of the ideas is to ensure you do not put a lot of money in the establishment of various commissions. In the last Parliament in the National Assembly, I was a Member of the Public Investments Committee (PIC). I was surprised to realize this country has about 350 parastatals. Most of these entities are superfluous. Some of them like the Lake Basin The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}