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{
    "id": 896160,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/896160/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 71,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Garissa Township, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Aden Duale",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 15,
        "legal_name": "Aden Bare Duale",
        "slug": "aden-duale"
    },
    "content": " Hon. Deputy Speaker, as I support, Members will agree with me that this House has serious issues with petitions. Petitions are a constitutional issue. They come from the people we represent. I led a delegation of the Procedure and House Rules Committee to the German Bundestag Parliament. The German Bundestag, equivalent of the National Assembly, receives over 20,000 petitions every year. We have a report to table. Hon. T.J. Kajwang’, who is a Member of the Procedure and House Rules Committee, will table a report to the House leadership this weekend in our retreat, Inshallah, if it happens. We will ask the House leadership to consider forming a committee that will deal with petitions alone. Our departmental committees have no time for petitions. They are busy with Bills, the Budget and Motions. We might go that route. We should form a committee that will deal with petitions or they be dealt with by committees in a different way. Petitions require you to go to the ground. If the petition is from Bura or Mwatate constituencies, you need to go to the ground, talk to the people and bring a report. We might be forced to amend the provision of the Standing Orders that once a petition is concluded, it is sent back to its owner. Petitions must be discussed in the Chamber. We must discuss them so that Kenyans can see that the petitions they send to Parliament or give to their Members of Parliament are allocated time for debate. If the House feels that we should amend that, we can do petitions on the Floor. We should not accept this story of saying that a petition is a constitutional matter. When people send a petition through their Member of Parliament or the Speaker, they want to see its concrete implementation. The Standing Orders state that a petition should be considered within 60 days. There are petitions that have taken six months to be considered and committees are yet to bring them back. Going forward, we should learn from other jurisdictions. At one point, we sat with the committee that deals with petitions. The committee that deals with petitions in the German Parliament is the same one that deals with human rights and legal affairs. The chairs and vice-chairs of committees and the House leadership will meet over the weekend. We must agree on how to deal with petitions. They are losing meaning in our Parliament. They are constitutional rights of the citizens. If it is a land issue, it must be dealt with. Because this is a Procedural Motion, I do not want to speak more than that. I support the Motion, but the House needs to learn from other jurisdictions."
}