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{
    "id": 998491,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/998491/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 1441,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nakuru Town East, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David Gikaria",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2489,
        "legal_name": "David Gikaria",
        "slug": "david-gikaria"
    },
    "content": " Thank you Hon. Speaker for giving me this opportunity to give my input to this very critical Motion. First, I would like to appreciate the members of my Committee and the co-operation that they gave during the budget-making process. Despite the very difficult situation we went through, the law stipulates that we have 21 days and remembering the number of Members sitting in a committee, it became very difficult. However, all the same, we completed the exercise on time and did some adjustments. Hon. Speaker, the budget under the two ministries - much as they are under-funded - if you look at the allocations that have been given to those two very important sectors, that is energy and petroleum, they have been declining over the years. We started with a high of almost Ksh120 billion some three or four years ago. However, now it is a paltry Kshs70 billion. Looking at the Government programmes and the energy sector being an enabler of the Big Four Agenda, I think it is part of why we expected that it would be given more money as we had indicated before the Budget and Appropriations Committee. Of course, we understand we have limited resources and so, as a Committee, we had to prioritize only the ongoing programmes. Hon. Speaker, as a Committee, we have also made it very clear to the respective Ministries that we will no longer be accepting new programmes if we have so many other programmes that are ongoing and yet, they do not have any budget allocation in any financial year. It is very sad to have over 20 transmission lines that are almost 80 to 90 per cent complete and yet they do not have an allocation. Yet, we are thinking of starting some other new programmes and allocating them billions. As a Committee, we have stopped some of those new programmes that were being brought so that we can be able to complete the ongoing ones. Moreover, we will be asking for a proper audit to be done in some of those things. You find that a programme that is almost 90 per cent complete is not given an allocation but, after one or two years, it is vandalized and it calls for funding when we restart that programme to almost 50 per cent. Yet, we required only 10 per cent. Therefore, as a Committee, we have put our feet on the ground and we have told the two respective Ministries under our oversight that we will no longer be doing that. Hon. Speaker, the continued delay in transmission and completion of some of those projects calls for unnecessary charges to the Government. At one point we had to pay quite a huge amount of money in hydro-power because the people who had been given some stations had already completed them. Therefore, as a Committee, much as we have been fighting to have low cost power, we have always tried to indicate that this Budget should go towards projects particularly on renewable energy which have very low costs of almost 70 dollars per kilometer per hour. Unfortunately, this is another area that we will be looking into this coming financial year."
}