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{
    "id": 879237,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/879237/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 418,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung'wah",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1835,
        "legal_name": "Anthony Kimani Ichung'Wah",
        "slug": "anthony-kimani-ichungwah"
    },
    "content": "Item No.7 talks of the numerous policy recommendations from the departmental committees. We speak to various issues that were raised by the various departmental committees. I do not want to tire Members by going through all the proposals by the departmental committees and the recommendations they made as they submitted to the Budget and Appropriations Committee. They were very many. We were able to pick a number which we have also proposed to the National Treasury to implement. One of the issues that was raised by a number of departmental committees, and I have in mind the Chair of the Departmental Committee on Health, was stalled projects. You remember about two weeks ago, the Leader of the Majority Party tabled a list in this House of all the stalled projects in the country. We have emphasised to the National Treasury that hopefully, as we move towards the estimates in April, we will see a number of those stalled projects as among those things that will be implemented. The Chair of the Departmental Committee on Health submitted to us a number of projects to the tune of about Kshs600 million which have since stalled. We hope that they will be included and given priority in line with the President’s directive that there be no new projects until we complete all the stalled projects. Other issues that we have noted and raised as mentioned is the issue of pending bills that need to be cleared as first charge by MDAs of the national Government. County governments need to prioritise the payment of pending bills to ensure that we are not holding a lot of our citizens’ money in Government. The Big Four Agenda is something that we had spoken to. As we said in last year’s BPS Report, we did not see a clear policy framework on the implementation of the Big Four Agenda or even a clear mechanism of allocating resources towards it. I had mentioned concerns where we had not seen deliberate efforts to regenerate our manufacturing sector. Other than policy directions that have been spoken to in the BPS, there is no deliberate effort to allocate resources to the Big Four Agenda. At least a portion of the money being raised through the Sports Fund that is before this House will go to Universal Healthcare (UHC). We have not seen any deliberate efforts to put a lot of money into the Big Four Agenda. Agriculture is still grossly underfunded. If we do not want the Big Four Agenda to be a pipe dream, the Government must provide a matrix that can assist in tracking how resources are allocated to all the Big Four Agenda items, be it UHC, affordable housing or food production. The legislature also needs to be very vigilant in evaluating Government policies. A case in point is the Digital Literacy Programme where we are seeing shifting policy from tablets to building of computer labs and providing laptops. It is instructive to note that the Government has already committed resources to the buying of tablets. The change in policy may result in loss of public funds if we are to shift towards building computer laboratories. It is also important to note that five years ago, when we were debating the issue of the Digital Literacy Programme, a number of Members of this House expressed their concerns and indicated that it would have been better for Government to consider building computer laboratories and equipping those laboratories in our schools rather than the provision of tablets. Five years down the line, we are seeing efforts to try and change that policy. It, therefore, becomes a concern. We only ask as the Budget and Appropriations Committee that when our MDAs appear before the departmental committees, either for BPS or in our routine work of oversight of the ministries in Government, we should offer a proper scrutiny of policies. I want to assure the House that the Parliamentary Budget Office, which has very good officers, is very ready and willing to assist all our departmental committees to offer meaningful scrutiny of all these policies so that we do not find ourselves in problems in the future. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}