Benson Makali Mulu

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 571 to 580 of 2345.

• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: Thank you, Hon. Speaker. Let me also join my colleague, the Leader of the Majority Party, to add my voice and request you to guide the House whether this Bill is in the House properly in terms of the House that has originated it. view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: I will not take long. I want to raise four points which you may consider as you give your direction. Chapter 8 of our Constitution talks about the Legislature. Article 93(1) of the Constitution talks about a Parliament which has two Houses - the Senate and the National Assembly. Article 2 that I want to read so that Members can hear says: “The National Assembly... 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. view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: It is Article 93(2) of the Constitution. It says: “The National Assembly and the Senate shall perform their respective functions in accordance with this Constitution.” Article 95 of the Constitution talks about the National Assembly while Article 96 talks about the Senate. It is clearly stated who does what. Having that in mind, it is very clear, as the Chair of the Budget and Appropriations Committee has said, that it is the responsibility of this House to originate the Division of Revenue Bill. I am saying this because Article 217 of the Constitution talks about the County Allocation of Revenue ... view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: It says that if this House attempts to amend or reject that Bill, it requires two-thirds majority. The spirit of the Constitution is that it should be originated by the Senate so that when it comes to this House, then we require high numbers either to amend or to reject it. I do not think the framers of this Constitution would have been mad to originate County Allocation of Revenue Bill from Senate and still allow the Senate to originate the Division of Revenue Bill. My thinking is that the Senate should be able to know that when it comes ... view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: The second point is the issue of revenue sharing. The revenue raising measures are only captured in the Finance Bill. Even as we are discussing this, this House has not passed the Finance Bill, which means we are not even aware of the amount we are going to collect because Hon. Members will have to debate and approve the Finance Bill. When you look at the Finance Bill, the revenue raising measures have nothing to do with the counties. We are not talking about how much will be raised at the county level. We are talking about the national level ... view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: The other point - and this is the most critical as a finance person - is that we are discussing about increasing amount to a level of a government and nowhere in that Bill, even as the Senate brings the Bill, are we told how to finance that deficit. To me, that is critical because it means then somebody has to meet the deficit. The question is: Where will that money be obtained from? Even as you give direction, we cannot have unfunded budget. It has never existed anywhere. We cannot have a budget where we are not saying where ... view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: The last point is on Article 219. It clearly states that once you approve the allocation to county governments and national Government, the county government allocation must be released by the National Treasury to the county governments. So, you cannot change anything. Where we have a shortfall of revenue, then it is the national Government which meets that shortfall. To me, those are the most critical issues even as we debate this issue. You need to guide us on that, so that we can debate from an informed position. view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: With those remarks, I will be sitting here waiting for your communication. Thank you. view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Let me at the outset say that I support this Bill. The amendment Bill is timely because we are just about to conduct the census and it is important we get the right legal framework for that purpose. The fact of the matter is that we want to amend the Statistics Act of 2006 so that it is aligned with the Constitution. Even as we do that, we need to realise that statistics, all over the world, are very important. Statistics are used for planning and making important national decisions. Since they are that ... view
• 1 Aug 2019 in National Assembly: so that we get the right statistics which will help the country for the next almost 10 years in planning. That is why it is important that this amendment Bill provides for separating the role of the secretariat from the role of board members. In any country where things function properly, the truth of the matter is the work of a board is to provide strategic direction of any organisation while the work of the secretariat is to implement the strategic issues raised by the board and implement them as they move forward to make sure that the organisation functions ... view