Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 922654,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/922654/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 320,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "creating, we want it to be headquartered in Nairobi? I suggested a headquarter outside Nairobi in the Tea Bill, but I could not convince my colleagues in the Ministry of Agriculture. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, Sen. Were may suggest that we have the headquarter outside Nairobi. You can even suggest Bungoma or Kisumu. After all, in a Bill like this one, the office of the Ombudsman will have representatives or branches in each of the 47 counties. What is the problem taking these headquarters to Kisumu, Mandera or Turkana? Think about any other part of the country that has not had the opportunity of hosting a national Government institution. We keep on talking about integration and building bridges, yet all that we are doing is lip service. We are not committing any deliberate action to bring Kenyans together. How will the people in Turkana know how people in Narok or Kisumu live, if we cannot ensure that the headquarters of such important institutions are decentralized to such places? Sen. Were perhaps has a better opportunity than I had with the Tea Bill of trying to relocate headquarters to the counties. She can pick any of the 47 counties. After all, there will be a representative office in each of the 47 county headquarters. There is no reason why the headquarters of the Ombudsman office cannot be taken to any other part of the country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the things that Sen. Were may also need to consider is how the county assemblies can have a say in the operations of the county offices. If we are speaking about counties, then we go ahead and legislate on how the national Parliament will nominate persons to the offices and oversight them, what about our county assemblies? I believe that somewhere within the framework of these offices, there can be a say at least of reports that the Ombudsman is supposed to present before the county assembly or how the county assembly oversights the operations of the county offices. There must at least be annexes that you need to establish so that public officials in our county governments know that the resident Ombudsman oversights their actions and it is not just the county assembly that gets to see how they perform their duties. There needs to be a way that we ensure that happens. If you read more about the office of the Ombudsman in many other jurisdictions like the United Kingdom (UK), they are actually domiciled within parliaments. In other jurisdictions, they are referred to as Parliamentary Ombudsman Office. This is because parliaments are a gathering of the people. This is where the complaints about maladministration are found. It will, therefore, be important for us to knit it together to ensure that the resident Ombudsman office in a particular county, at least, has a connection with the resident county assembly so that the MCAs can channel some of the complaints that they have with public officers into this particular office. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, part of what an Ombudsman does is to send recommendations including proposing alterations of by-laws and different laws. They can send the same to county assemblies with proposals on how certain issues should be dealt with. That is something that you may want to consider. 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."
}