Parliament to extend sittings

Written By:Collins Anampiu , Posted: Tue, Aug 17, 2010

Parliament has agreed to extend its sittings to include Thursday mornings for the next two weeks.

Moving a procedural motion to this effect deputy leader of government business Sally Kosgei says this would allow parliament time to scrutinize and dispense with its heavy calendar of implementation of the new constitution as well as dispense with each ministry allocation as outlined in the budget estimates before 31st of August deadline.

Seconding the motion Education Minister Sam Ongeri pointed out the extension was necessary to ensure house business is complete by next Friday when the new constitution will be promulgated.

Legislators supporting the motion however queried why the government was giving prominence to debate on allocation of smaller ministries budgets as opposed to larger ministries requiring huge allocations.

Garsen MP Danson Mungatana expressed concern that it could be a strategy by government to hoodwink legislators to pass the remaining estimates which would not find time to be addressed individually through the guillotine process to avoid scrutiny by parliament.

Guillotine is when parliament approves the budget of several ministries in bulk.

In the past legislators have alleged such practice makes it impossible to detect falsified figures during approval of budget estimates leading to embezzlement of funds.