Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 974474,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/974474/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 361,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, without mentioning names, almost each and every extremely wealthy person in the country has made money through some inexplicable means from the offices they have held. Either they have been junior officers in very vital positions or they have been senior people in positions of accountability and failed to do so. Such a law would help. If you go to Nigeria, you will find something bizarre. A person goes to university and qualifies to be a medical doctor, lawyer or an engineer but the first place they want to work is customs or immigration. That is where they struggle for. In fact, you will find many medical doctors who should be saving lives like Florence Nightingale, are working as immigration officers because of the ease of acquiring wealth from those positions. When the systems are weak, you end up with people who fuel inflation in a country, getting money without working for it, they cannot account for it and the people who work hard are the ones who suffer and carry the weight of society. More often than not, such characters do not pay taxes, it is the small man on the payroll whose Pay As You Earn (PAYE) is creamed off routinely every month. So, we must have a system that balances, like the Senator for Siaya said, because we have a new Constitution that is very strong on personal liberties and Bill of Rights. In calculating this accountability structure, Sen. Farhiya will have to very carefully go through the Bill of Rights and see whether the processes that we are envisaging will undermine any of the provisions in the Bill of Rights like Unreasonable Deprivation of Property, Violation of Privacy and so on. Madam Temporary Speaker, I now want to look at the several clauses of the Bill and advise Sen. Farhiya that she can make them better. To begin with, when you want to carry out a lifestyle audit and do it effectively, it is not very good for the citizens to domicile this authority in too many bodies. In Clause 5, the Bill is domiciling this authority in the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and Public Service Commission under the Public Officer Ethics Act. I will tell Sen. Farhiya why I think so. First of all, the KRA; the role of KRA is to collect taxes, period. They can investigate people on tax avoidance and tax evasion. They have got no duty in interfering with people’s lifestyles. Their duty is to collect taxes. If you have understated tax payment, they have the power to prosecute you and their power is set out in the Act. 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."
}