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{
    "id": 879280,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/879280/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 461,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Bondo, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gideon Ochanda",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1264,
        "legal_name": "Gideon Ochanda Ogolla",
        "slug": "gideon-ochanda-ogolla"
    },
    "content": "KRA is one opaque entity that I have no idea when it interfaces with this Parliament. The Treasury shields KRA until you cannot see it anywhere in Parliament. This is happening against a situation where there could be certain little things that we see. I serve in the Committee on Regional Integration and that is how I got to know quite a bit of things that happen on our border stations and posts. In Malaba border, for example, KRA expects to get money from the customs but all of the staff there lives in the houses of smugglers. How can a smuggler in whose house you live, pay you customs duty the following day? It is impossible. And it is happening all over. So, there must be a very different way of looking at these things. We should not be talking about changing our tax policy and many other things when the basic ones that are in our hands we are unable to manage. We are unable to collect money in Malaba. Why? What happens? Everybody crosses. You cross to Uganda when you want food, beer or fuel. What is left on the Kenyan side is just parking space. People come from Uganda to park on the Kenyan side because we do not charge them. When they park on the Ugandan side they are charged. So, trailers deliver things in Uganda then come to park in Kenya. You get a long queue of 5 kilometres of trucks on the Kenyan side because parking is free. How can we say that we are not generating money and yet these simple, little things are happening? Definitely, we are living a lie. You are talking about the Big Four Agenda when in real sense you know you are borrowing. That is number one. Number two, you have projects that have stalled for ages and you have also given a directive that you are not doing anything new; you want to concentrate on the old projects. So, you want to concentrate on the old with a new policy. How will that work? How will you do it if your instructions are that you cannot do anything new? You want to go to the old to generate food and the old did not work. You want universal healthcare in the new and the old did not work. We are basically going round and round and cheating ourselves. It is really bad that this is happening. How will we achieve this when we are very clear that pending bills are all over each year? When we talk about stalled projects, even the list that was given by the Treasury does not have some of the biggest projects that have stalled. One is across here in Kariobangi: a big health facility that stalled. You look through the list where they are talking about little irrigation projects that stalled in some communities, but they fail to list one that is so big and is in Nairobi. What is happening? Why is it that when you are looking for a list of stalled projects, Treasury takes a whole year? Who pays for these projects? I thought it is Treasury. It needs to know what it is paying today, what it is paying tomorrow and what it paid yesterday, such that when you are looking for information for a single day, you need to know exactly where we have reached with payments and what we have wanted to do and the much not yet paid. It is taking much time. Treasury must again negotiate with departments to tell them how much they have not performed in terms of projects. There is a big problem. We are talking about issues of Recurrent Expenditure. For how long should we sing that in the counties, where there are clear policies and guidelines, that you cannot spend more than 70 per cent on Recurrent Expenditure and a governor comes to tell us very clearly that he has more than 100 illiterate drivers and he has had them for the last seven years and that he cannot sack them? What does that mean? And while he has 100 drivers, he employs more! When you visit counties, which have second generation governors, you will realise that there are four different Civil Service lines. There are service lines that were inherited from local authorities and they are 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."
}