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{
    "id": 968885,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/968885/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 431,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kandara, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Alice Wahome",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1700,
        "legal_name": "Alice Muthoni Wahome",
        "slug": "alice-muthoni-wahome"
    },
    "content": "The oversight role is suffering more so because of the era I have talked about. Therefore, it is time Parliament took its role more seriously than it is doing. Recently, a Member of this House spoke in very bad light about her colleagues in a harambee in Kirinyaga. It is in public domain and unless we are careful, we cannot be given bad names by others and other Members follow the same and give ourselves bad names without substantiating issues. Therefore, we are doing things that are not necessarily legislative thus not doing our work correctly. When I look at the budget work and where the Government is, we have a lot in our hands that we can do to help the Government to implement projects. But the loss of money continues every year. Every year, we deal with big and bigger loses of money. Parliament has to be accountable. It is not always proper to point fingers at the Executive when we are the ones who examine financial statements and allocate money to the Government. Then when it comes to overseeing, we say that things are going on very well. We are shying away from our work. I see Hon. Nassir is very happy about this statement. He is in the Public Investments Committee and he has done fairly well, but I remind him that the oversight role is more critical especially when it is taken up by the Opposition or the Minority. When you call people the Opposition, they feel like they are not in the Government. This Government is for the Minority and the Majority. Therefore, all of us have a critical role to play. I am concerned about the debt the country is shouldering. We are talking about close to Kshs6 trillion and every year, we are adding onto it instead of reducing it. The last time we allowed the National Treasury to borrow, we agreed that it was because we want to retire very old debts. I want to inform Hon. Ngeno, the Member for Emurua Dikirr, that the debts we were referred to by the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Planning go back close to Independence days, way back to 1970s. Some of them have commercial rates. We asked the Cabinet Secretary to file a schedule of the debts, so that this House can see that we allowed borrowing for purposes of consolidating the debts by borrowing at a 1 per cent from the World Bank and retiring the old debts. That schedule will help Hon. Ngeno to see whether we are dealing with the debts of retired President Moi, retired President Kibaki or this Government. This Government has done very badly. If you look very clearly at the debt, it is syndicated and commercial loans borrowed by the same people who are in the Government. Therefore, when we come here to approve a supplementary budget, we must remind the corrupt, the people stealing from Kenyans that we still have roads that have not been done, hospitals where people are still dying, there is hunger and we have not irrigated one million acres of land. We want to remind our President the promises he made about the stadia. We want to remind this Government that we still expect the country to move as a nation and that unity is more important than the positions that we seek to occupy in a hungry nation. Look at the floods that have hit the country. A lot of it has to do with bad planning in towns. Our roads have been swept away because of bad workmanship. Therefore, this country must style up and start working properly. Parliament must of course stop singing choruses when we come to this House to approve budgets, but ensure that accountability is maintained. I retire there. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak even as we soon go for recess. I hope we will have enough time to go through the BBI Report. Next time we also need to factor in the budget properly, so that we are not drawing money through the back door to fund a referendum or other groupings of some work. 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."
}