National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi. Parliament is increasingly
becoming a major financial burden to the public. FILE PHOTO | NATION
MEDIA GROUP
Parliament’s key role is to legislate and keep watch, on behalf of the public, over other organs of the State.
Among
its watchdog roles is keeping an eye on the use of public resources to
ensure that any money used must be properly accounted for and gives
value to the taxpayer.
However, Parliament is
increasingly becoming a major burden to the public. The latest report by
the Controller of Budget indicates that the Parliamentary Service
Commission has gobbled up Sh550 million in a record three months through
MPs’ travel. Add to that sitting allowances for the numerous
departmental committees and other incidentals and the figures are sure
to be staggering. Yet these are not core areas of business for
Parliament’s budget.
UNJUSTIFIABLE
The
expenditure on travel is unjustifiable because it hardly benefits the
public. For one, the argument that the trips provide MPs with a chance
to benchmark what they are doing against other nations is hollow.
Any
information they may seek on any subject is easily available online and
one does not need a full delegation to travel abroad to get it.
Second,
some of the trips are irrelevant, while others duplicate work being
competently handled by relevant government agencies.
For
example, the Public Accounts Committee visited South Africa, Canada,
France, and India to investigate the procurement of the equipment used
by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission when the matter
was being handled by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, which
has the right competence.
The public cannot continue
losing money through such meaningless assignments. Mr Justin Muturi and
Mr Ekwee Ethuro, the Speakers of the National Assembly and the Senate,
respectively, must enforce stringent rules to curb the wastage of public
resources.
No comments :
Post a Comment