• In another incident, Machakos Senator said the people trust senators more than governors, and should thus be incharge of county allocation, to which committee chair said is wishful thinking
Just to what extent can politicians be ignorant of abbreviations of known state agencies? This is what happened to Funyula MP Wilberforce Oundo during debate on the nomination of Amina Abdalla to the Salaries and Remuneration Commission on Thursday. The MP insisted on abbreviating the Commission as CRC instead of SRC. This happened even after the speaker reminded him that the commission is called SRC and not CRC. The good lawmaker still repeated the mistake almost three times and he later got it right albeit with a struggle.
An ODM senator last week caused fracas during a committee meeting to question a governor over audit queries. The lawmaker arrived for the meeting late, accompanied by his two aides. The Committee room was fully packed with senators, MCAs governor's top finance officers, parliamentary staff and journalists. The good lawmaker stormed out demanding that some of the parliamentary staff and the guests vacate some seats for his aides. This caused a commotion forcing the chairman to intervene. He ordered the aides leave the room, irking the senator. He stormed out of the room in protest.
When Office of the Controller of Budget was before the Senate’s Finance Committee on Tuesday, Machakos Senator Boniface Kabaka made a rather ridiculous suggestion.
Deputy Controller of Budget Stephen Masha had just taken senators through his presentation and invited questions. Bungoma Senator Moses Wetang’ula observed that from the presentation, it was clear Kenyans did not trust governors with public funds.
It was then that Kabaka suggested the Senate should initiate a process to amend the law to make senators be in-charge of funds that the National Treasury sends to the counties.
“People trust senators more than governors. Why can't we be in charge of county funds,” Kabaka posed.
Committee chair Mohamed Maalim Mohamud immediately interjected and cautioned Kabaka against wishful thinking.