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{
    "id": 968851,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/968851/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 397,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tongaren, FORD-K",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Dr. Eseli Simiyu",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 141,
        "legal_name": "David Eseli Simiyu",
        "slug": "david-eseli"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for this opportunity. In fact, I had pressed my button sometimes back and I ran into another Motion. The Speaker then gave me a chance and I told him I did not want to contribute to the Roads Bill. It is this one that I wanted to contribute to. It really amuses me when we debate the Report of the PAC, which I am a Member. That is the ultimate of oversight for Parliament. However, it is usually amuses and embarrasses me, that, at the time when we were debating the Report, usually the House was very thin yet this is the ultimate. One of our functions in this House is oversight. This is the ultimate oversight of the Government. We might have to come up with a way of encouraging Members to participate in this and read the reports because they are key to our function in this House. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, if you just read the general comments, you will find something very interesting. One of the causes of the difficulties we have is slow absorption of resources. In this case and that particular financial year, there was under-expenditure of Kshs220 million. The reasons given were the IFMIS challenges and inadequate revenue collection. It means we are drawing up budgets which we are unable to keep up with. It is like if this House passes a budget, but apparently we are unable to get the revenue for it. It confirms what we have been told by the acting Cabinet Secretary for Finance that our projection of revenue collection as taxes is way out of this world. So, we cannot meet our targets. That kind of wishful budgeting is not good for us because then we end up with an under-expenditure yet we need to collect that revenue, and we could not spend it. At the moment, KRA is on the warpath of collecting taxes. If any Member of this House has not been called by KRA, then he is a very lucky fellow. They are on the warpath of collecting taxes. They have even gone to the villages and the CDF to the project management committees. They are now on the case of the small contractors in the villages to pay their taxes, yet nobody is telling us how efficient they are becoming on collecting non tax revenues. We are having a problem in collecting the non-tax revenues because of inefficiencies within the Government. That means we are not collecting the amount that we should collect as non-tax revenue. Instead, we are very busy chasing the tax revenues. If you look again at the general comments, you will find that debt increased by 137 per cent in less than five years. An increase of debt of 137 per cent is no joke. In fact, I deliberately refused to contribute in the last Motion, namely, the Roads Bill, because we are increasing debt. We have started roads which we are unable to complete and we must borrow to complete them. At this rate, after we finish these roads, any other Government coming in, will not be able to build any other roads. Whatever money the Kenya Roads Board will collect will be going to pay the debts. These extreme debts that we are getting ourselves into are not good for the country. The other amazing thing is that there are certain departments that the Auditor-General gave a disclaimer opinion. This means it was total mismanagement of resources. They did not provide any supporting documents. The amount of money involved in that situation was close to Kshs35 billion. Such an amount of money is not chicken feeds. It is a hell lot of money. Some of the departments involved in this were the Ministry of Lands and the Settlement Funds Trustees. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}