Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 968068,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/968068/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 97,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "because of visiting pain and hardship on wananchi by not paying for goods and services procured. Mr. Speaker, Sir, you may recall that in the last Parliament – and those who were here, like Sen. Orengo, can remember – that the Senator for Murang’a then moved a Motion here. We approved to discontinue disbursement of funds to Murang’a County, but the national Treasury just ignored the Senate Resolution and continued with business as usual. Yesterday, the Senate Committee, on behalf of the House, met the governors. To their credit, all the governors who are involved with regard to these 15 counties – apart from Mombasa, Baringo, Garissa and Migori – turned up, and they gave very cogent explanations on how they are taking steps to clear the pending bills. Mr. Speaker, Sir, you may also recall that when we received reports of pending bills last year, we were told that the pending bills amounted to over Kshs120 billion. However, upon verification, these figures dropped to almost half. I think continuing verification, audit and re-audit will help in giving value for money; the money that we vote here to send to the counties. I want to single out Baringo County. When Baringo was flagged out and put on this red list of counties that have not paid their debts in pending bills, within a month or two, Baringo had paid everything and they have no pending bills to date. We must salute them for that and I want to urge all counties to go in that direction. We urge the House to appreciate the decision taken by the Minister because it has woken up those who have been lax in discharging duties in management of public affairs. Secondly, I want to urge the House to agree with the Committee that this process having been taken and a wakeup call having been rung, that the House enjoins the Committee to continue monitoring the situation. That is why the Chairman has said we are not giving a blanket cover to say that we do not agree with the Minister. We are going to have a progress report in three months where we are going to call the Minister to give us his progress report; we are going to call the Controller of Budget to give us his or her progress report and above all we are going to call these same governors - the 15 who had been flagged out - to come and table a progress report on what they are doing. We found positively that some counties like Tharaka Nithi, Kirinyaga and others have already appropriated funds through supplementary budgets to clear these pending bills. However, the big question that we must keep asking is; if procurements were done three or four years ago with attendant budgets according to the provisions of the PFM Act, services and goods were procured and delivered; where did the money that was in the budget for those procurements go to? This is a question we need to ask the Auditor-General and I need to put it on record that some of the governors were not quite happy with the manner in which the Auditor-General has gone about verifying these bills. They said that the auditors just go to counties, maroon themselves in hotels and call everybody and anybody to come and make presentations. That is not how an audit should be undertaken. If that is what was done, then it is wrong. 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."
}