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{
    "id": 82965,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/82965/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 367,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Keynan",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 41,
        "legal_name": "Adan Wehliye Keynan",
        "slug": "adan-keynan"
    },
    "content": "I am, indeed, humbled and privileged to present to this august House the report of my Committee on the procurement, disposal and construction of properties in the five missions that I have just stated. But before I go into the details of what we gathered, I would like to take this early opportunity to thank your office and the office of the Clerk. You will realize that we are talking of issues of missions in different continents. You know where Nigeria, Egypt, Brussels, Japan and Pakistan are. Without your support and, indeed, without your personal involvement and intervention; having initiated one of the most pragmatic and let me say broad reforms in our Standing Orders in the legislative history of the Republic of Kenya, some of the events that touch on the oversight role, not only of my Committee but the entire Parliament cannot be achieved without having a Speaker with a reformist mind and without Parliament being prepared to play its rightful oversight role. It is in line with our oversight role that we stumbled on a number of issues that touched on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Speaker, Sir, late last year, there was a budgetary provision in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs budget and I am sure quite a number of Kenyans must have seen it, which advertised for the purchase of Presidential suites in Nairobi. When we saw the advert, we interrogated the Ministry’s budget and it dawned on us that there was something that was not clear. We called the Minister and his team, we inquired why in this modern time, somebody in Kenya should purport to construct presidential villas in different places in this era where there are security challenges and where everybody is talking about economic gains. I can tell you today that it is as a result of our intervention, as a Committee, that that project was cancelled and we feel that we saved the taxpayers between Kshs800 million and Kshs1 billion that would have been used to buy ten maisonettes in an area that was not totally required. I felt that I should bring that to the attention of this House."
}