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{
    "id": 902052,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/902052/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 292,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Funyula, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) Wilberforce Oundo",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13331,
        "legal_name": "Wilberforce Ojiambo Oundo",
        "slug": "wilberforce-ojiambo-oundo-2"
    },
    "content": "Merchant Shipping Act No.4 of 2009. It is, indeed, dangerous to this country. It should not be allowed to go through. Giving discretion to one particular person to vitiate a law in respect of a particular entity, be it government or anything else, is dangerous to this country. We will be creating a rogue system that will misuse the law to confer benefits to individuals and cronies, essentially bringing this country to an economic ruin. A Cabinet Secretary cannot be the keeper or feeler of public interests. Government policy cannot dictate to the extent of punishing the entire population of Kenya. Cabinet Secretaries are not elected and, therefore, they do not represent the public interest; they represent the interests of their appointing authority. So, they cannot purport to measure and gauge public interest. I am so sure I will rally my colleagues during the Committee of the whole House to shoot down this particular amendment. It is offensive; it does not keep the interests of Kenyans at heart. Second is the amendment to the PFM Act concerning the accounting officers for the PSC. It is a bad amendment. It is an amendment that has ulterior motive and as my colleagues have said, if indeed you have issues with any particular accounting officer, you would rather deal with the accounting officer individually instead of trying to sneak in amendments through the backdoor. It is incomprehensible that one organisation can have as many as three or endless number of accounting officers. We have the Clerk of the Senate in respect to the Senate and then we have the Clerk of the National Assembly in respect of the National Assembly. Indeed, with plain reading of Article 127 (3) of the Constitution, it suggests that the Clerk of the Senate shall be the Secretary to the Commission. Indeed, it is suggesting that he is the only officer authorised to be the accounting officer of the PSC. What is provided in the PFM Act could as well be unconstitutional but that is a matter that needs to be raised by the relevant people who know what is supposed to be done. I would generally oppose that amendment because it is creating many accounting officers then everybody literally becomes an accounting officer. That in my view is a pure attempt to subvert proper management of public resources and there is a possibility that a scheme could be easily hatched to defraud public funds by using so many other accounting officers."
}