{"count":1608389,"next":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=150352","previous":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=150350","results":[{"id":1521702,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521702/?format=json","text_counter":262,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Mumma","speaker_title":"The Temporary Speaker","speaker":null,"content":" Proceed, Sen. Oketch."},{"id":1521703,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521703/?format=json","text_counter":263,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Oketch Gicheru","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. I also want to thank my brother, the good Senator for Bomet, for seeing it fit that I second this Motion. In my view, there is no other important Bill that can be of serious attention to us than the one that is at the backbone of this report. The joint committee comprising Members of the National Assembly and the Senate looked at this report. My reasoning is very simple. All the country’s problems lie on what this report and the subsequent meditated version of the Bill says. All our problems as a country come from this issue of conflict of interest. We have the Ndegwa Commission Report of 1971. That report was presented to Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya, in May 1971. It is available online and The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."},{"id":1521704,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521704/?format=json","text_counter":264,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Oketch Gicheru","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"probably in the Parliament Library. The 398-page report is rich just like the Sessional Papers that were written by amazing patriots like Tom Mboya. There is a part of that report that has been seriously disastrous to our country. In that report, it was suggested that civil servants can do business while employed by the Government. Despite the good intentions of the report, that is our biggest problem as a country. The report was written by some of the best professors. I find it extremely rich in terms of rethinking the public service structure as well as remuneration of public servants. Before 1971, public servants in this country used to earn the lowest amounts of money. Alongside that, they were not allowed to do business because service meant service. You were called on duty to serve as a public servant of the nation, but the remuneration was very shallow. The moment this country opened an opportunity for public servants to do business and create great wealth for themselves, it did not just stop at the idea of participating in the free market economy. It also meant that public servants would go ahead and engage in doing business with the Government and that is where the rot in this country started. Years later, it has now become an endemic problem in our budget-making process, especially when you think about Parliament and the Executive. This problem is not only in the national Government, especially Parliament which comprise the Senate and the National Assembly. It is also becoming a serious replica even in the county structure or devolved units of this country. The budgeting process is done by civil servants, having secured a number of procurement opportunities that defray the public from services that they need in various ways. They have become synonymous with the porosity of serious resources getting into Government. However, the public can just never see where this money is going. It is easy today for Gen Zs and the younger generation to fight the symptoms of why our country is hemorrhaging in terms of serious taxation, but without service. However, we can never get to the root cause of that problem if we do not give life to this report. I see it as the first attempt to undo the wrongs of the Ndegwa Commission Report. Look at other countries, including Nordic countries today where our young people admire the quality of a good life there. You will find that they have the highest form of taxation. However, people there do not riot against taxation. Citizens of those countries, never complain about any taxation because tax raised by the government goes to provide services for the population. Today, if you are in Norway, Denmark or Sweden, some services are provided by the government, but there are also what we call tax benefits. Even women in those countries today can go to work knowing very well that the government will even invest in the aftercare for their children when they are at work. Madam Temporary Speaaker, in our country today, the tax that is raised finds its way into the pocket of individual because civil servants are doing business with the Government. This is the crust of what I call a conflict of interest. Others are not as bad as this. Today in Parliament, individuals have perfected the art of scavenging for what will be put in the budget tomorrow. Which road will belong to who? Which pseudo company The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."},{"id":1521705,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521705/?format=json","text_counter":265,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Oketch Gicheru","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"will I put, including some proxies that will supply or do a certain work for the Government? They are sitting at the seats of accountability; they cannot hold themselves to account. Nobody else can hold them to account because the moment they have put several budgetary allocations to projects that they want to do with serious and dubious companies, then when it comes to this Parliament, they sanitise themselves. Madam Temporary Speaker, almost 70 per cent of our taxes never go to do any job. Inflation in the procurement processes in this country is an endemic that is becoming difficult to address. We have put in the DNA and the psyche of Kenyans that you do not need to be an entrepreneur in this country. You do not need to think about an enterprising economy. The simplest way to get and amass wealth, whether primitively or in a pseudo manner is simply to join the Government. Whether you join the Government as a legislator, as a subordinate judiciary, or in the executive, you can be rest assured that you will be wealthier than any entrepreneur who has spent 20 years doing business in this country. This is a menace that young people and serious patriots in this country must rise to look at the eye of what the mediated version of this Bill is proposing so that we can deal with this menace, once and for all. It is not going to be easy. From 1970 to date, Duncan Ndegwa in the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) sat to rethink about the public service structure of this country. They endorsed this kind of commission report. The resultant behaviour of public servants harvesting from the public coffers to date is not an easy thing to fight. Even as we support this report and agree as a House with our partners in the National Assembly to make this Bill come to life, we have a serious war to wage against enterprising within Government. It is a big problem. It is so big that once it becomes law and we do not give it some teeth, it will never be easy to run the Government. It will end up with abuse of office. People only abuse office because they have power to procure the services of entities that are supposed to enforce laws that are in this country. There is a debate right now on what is going on in the Judiciary. In 2007 after the crisis that we had in this country, people rethought and invested in our Constitution. Some of the patriots in this country, including Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga at that time fought so hard for a Judiciary Ombudsman so that as we thought about independent commissions in this country. We could also have an ombudsman for the independent Judiciary, but people did not want it. Today, I dare say confidently that one of the most procured institutions for enforcing our laws in this country is the Judiciary. How do you explain this? A matter of urgency is put before a court of law in this country for a determination within two or three days like what happened in the National Assembly. A determination was needed to be made on who are the majority leaders in the House. Then the judgment came two years later. How do you explain that if it is not the procurement of the services of judges in this country? Who oversights our judges? The Parliament can be overseen by the Judiciary. The Executive can be overseen by Parliament. Who oversights our judges? The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."},{"id":1521706,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521706/?format=json","text_counter":266,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Oketch Gicheru","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"The abuse of office has come to the extent that this House has witnessed the creation of an independent institution called the EACC. We sit in these committees of the House every single day. Today I was in three committees. We look at the reports by the office of the Auditor General (AG). We find serious variances that have led to public loss of funds in counties. We pronounce ourselves in those committees and send them to the EACC. Two years later, no Government, even a single one, is held to account. What is that if it is not procuring EACC? What is that if it is not procuring the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) in this country? What is that if it is not procuring the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI)? The abuse of office is not just a simple issue of the backlog and the bottlenecks that we have with the investigations. It is intertwined with the public service, which has allowed public servants to make a humongous amount of money. We have made a country where people in Government have built a bad system where they are protecting themselves and do not allow taxes of this country to go back and serve our people. As a young person in this country who has sat in this House time without a number, I have listened to my elders and ranking Members in this House speak about the challenges of providing water, gas and medicine in this country. I know when I sit in the Finance and Budget Committee, that it is possible not to borrow money and provide these services to our people. We have the capacity raise taxes. However, the hemorrhage of those taxes and the lifestyle that our people see the politicians, the judges and the people in the executive live, merely one or two months after getting into office, is a pandemic in this country that we must confront through this Bill. I have never been happier about a committee that has sat together in a joint session and mediated the version of this Bill. I thank my brothers and sisters from the Senate and the National Assembly for the version they have come up with. They have done something unknowingly in dealing with the Ndegwa Commission Report that brought us this menace in our country. I hope that we can fast-track this particular Bill to come to this House. We need to agree on that mediated version, give it life and go further to make sure that we will champion its implementation outside the precincts of Parliament. We are leaders who have been elected by the confidence of people in this country and we have been given the mandate and trust. Madam Temporary Speaker, I dare say that I know that the President today is facing a lot of scathing attacks on the issue of taxation, high cost of living and on why he has entered deeper into the pockets of individuals who are getting salaries in this country. Madam Temporary Speakere, that is not the issue. The issue is that people have lost confidence and trust in the public service in this country. This is because of the lifestyle we have chosen to live and the services we have chosen not to give our people. Simply by being able to trade with Government and enrich ourselves as public servants and state officers who do not allow the taxes to go back to our people. It is possible that we can have high taxation as well as higher services to our people. It is possible in our generation. It is possible to restore the confidence of our people in governance in this country. The journey of that confidence of our people on the The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."},{"id":1521707,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521707/?format=json","text_counter":267,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Oketch Gicheru","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"President, on us legislators and on the judges in this country, starts with making sure that the Conflict of Interest Bill is given life. It is not simply passed by mere action of Parliament. Nevertheless, it is given life and make sure that the idea of enterprising in Government that people are scared of confronting and the Members of Parliament are scared of facing, can come to an end in this country. Madam Temporary Speaker, if you go to a place like Britain today and you are a public servant, you have to give the private sector the opportunity to serve the government as the first market in an economy. Let the private sector thrive in making a stronger market economy that can truly give jobs to people. Jobs that will not only be quality in scale, but also vast and diverse in scale. Consequently, the idea that public service has become a place where people come with the concept of ghost workers is now becoming a menace in our country. Why is that possible? It is only possible because of conflict of interest. People in Government have become very comfortable with the idea that if I am in a place of power, I can create jobs that don not exist. Therefore, pay money where there is no value for that money and be okay that I am protecting my own. If I am a Kikuyu, Kalenjin or Luo, I am protecting people from my tribe because I have an opportunity to employ them for jobs that do no exist. Spending money that is hard earned by Kenyans where I do not need to spend it, when I could as well easily stop the conflict of interest of employing my own and simply empower and endorse a market economy where the private sector can not only to create good jobs, but also go ahead and build an economy that works. Today I was looking at the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) before us in the House. I can see the inflation has gone down. However, I cannot relate the inflation with the cost of goods and services in this economy. I am seeing the current account of Government is looking very positive. Nonetheless, that current account is not because of export increase in our economy. It is because of import decrease in our economy, meaning that the economy is not thriving. There is no production that is happening in this economy. Nobody sees where the tax is going because it is not empowering businesses or providing services. Right now, we have had a big scare with United States Agency for International Development (USAID). If you look at Official Development Assistance (ODA) in Government, the services that are supposed to be done by ministerial agencies that we get grants for are not in Government. For instance, where USAID comes in place to give a few grants to do things like providing water in the slums and Medicare for people who cannot afford it, most of that money ends up going to the pocket of individuals in terms of administrative costs. Madam Temporary Speaker, I want you to think about it if you give me a minute. With the pronouncement of Donald Trump, the President of the United States, that USAID will not give us any money. Have we imagined as a country where we will go to with services that were being rendered by this---"},{"id":1521708,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521708/?format=json","text_counter":268,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Veronica Maina","speaker_title":"The Temporary Speaker","speaker":null,"content":" Please give him a minute."},{"id":1521709,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521709/?format=json","text_counter":269,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Oketch Gicheru","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"What will happen? Our Government will be forced to start thinking about spending our taxes in offering services in that gap. We are sitting on a The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."},{"id":1521710,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521710/?format=json","text_counter":270,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Oketch Gicheru","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"time bomb, because when these seepages still go on in Government and that menace of ODA’s again comes to the Government, we will face a crisis in this country that can lead to another uninformed revolution that can make this country ungovernable. I will not only stop at seconding this Bill as I am seconding it, but also urging us to go back and reflect as a people and as leaders in this country. We want to go with this unsustainable idea of trading and primitively accumulating wealth from Government. I do not think we want that because if we collapse our country based on ---"},{"id":1521711,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1521711/?format=json","text_counter":271,"type":"scene","speaker_name":"","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"(Question proposed)"}]}