Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 904224,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/904224/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 277,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "As a House, we must critically question ourselves. Have we expanded our thinking? Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr., when you wake up in the morning, you dressed, put on your Tommy Hilfiger tie, that you are dressed today, and stared at yourself in the mirror. Do you feel that you have sufficiently used your brain power and offered the best you can as the Senator for Makueni County and as a Senator in the Republic of Kenya? Is it enough for us to come and lament? We have a board up there naming this House the Senate. We may soon consider changing it and refer it to the „House of Lamentations‟. That will become the title of this House because we do not have agreeable working points. What is it that we want to achieve? I have challenged my colleagues, especially, those who sit in the Leadership of the House, that a time has come for us to retreat and reconsider our ways. This business of chasing almost 10 to 15 goals at a go is what has made us to be what we are. Can we narrow it down to two or three specific goals? For example, for the next cycle or six, seven or eight months, this is what we want to achieve as a Senate. We want to ensure that if it is about the reports which come to this House from the county governments, we deal with them thoroughly and properly. We should ensure that we take the Auditor- General to task. Madam Temporary Speaker, for example, the County Public Accounts and Investment Committee only deals with the report that is tabled before it by the Office of the Auditor-General. All of you come from counties. If you take time to read through the report of the Auditor-General, they capture 30 to 40 per cent of the errors that are in the county governments. Some of the auditors are strangers. For example, I have seen a specific road in my county that I know so well and was made by the multinationals and the tea estates. However, it is captured in the county books as a road that was done by the county government. The auditors who have come from Nakuru do not have the kind of geographical knowledge of my county that I have as a Senator. They do not know that the 10 or 20 roads that have been captured out of the list, 15 are works that have been done by counties. However, the other five are routes that were used to pilferage public funds. The Auditor-General is not able to pick out such errors. Therefore, I agree with what Sen. Omogeni said that if we are also not properly facilitated as Senators to carry our oversight seriously, then it is impossible to give out some of these reports. The County Public Accounts and Investment Committee (CPAIC) only reacts to what the Auditor-General has pointed out. The Office of the Auditor-General has refused to reform. It is still operating in the days of provinces. They have provincial offices where we have people seated in Nakuru over sighting eight to ten counties. When shall they reform and ensure that they have a representative in a specific county whose number I have, as the Senator of Kericho? Therefore, I can send him or her a message and tell him, Mr. “X”, “Y”, “Z”, that road that the county executive has captured was not built by them. For example, that Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) classroom was a donation by the community. It was not build by county funds. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}