House teams tussle over cemetery scam

By Martin Mutua and Peter Opiyo

Controversy is brewing within Parliament over the Sh283 million cemetery scandal with two departmental committees in a tug of war over the matter.

The bone of contention is a report tabled in March, which implicated Deputy Prime Minister and Local Government Minister Musalia Mudavadi.

The committees, that of Local Authorities headed by Wajir North MP Mohammed Gabow and the Local Authorities and Funds Accounts chaired by Wundanyi MP Thomas Mwadegu, are now headed for a showdown over the matter.

In March, Kisumu Town East MP Shakeel Shabir, who was the chairman of the Local Authorities Committee, tabled a report on the cemetery saga before he resigned in a huff.

The report, which is still pending before the House implicates Mudavadi demanding that he should take political responsibility for the scam.

But two months ago, Mwadegu’s committee headed to the Coast and ‘harmonised’ its report with the one written by the Shabir-led committee.

In the ‘harmonised’ report, the findings absolve the minister from any responsibility.

Yesterday, Gabow told The Standard that his committee had been instructed by the clerk of the National Assembly Patrick Gichohi to withdraw the report they had laid in order for the ‘harmonised’ report to be formally tabled for debate.

Same issues

The advice by the clerk is that only one of the reports could be debated in the House, as they both addressed the same issues.

Gabow, who has been out of the country but returned last week, has now called a crisis meeting of his committee tomorrow to deliberate on whether to withdraw the report.

“It will be up to the members of the committee to decide whether to withdraw the report to allow for the other one to be tabled. That is not for me decide,” he added.

Interestingly, the House Business Committee has failed to slot the report for debate since March, when it was tabled.

Yesterday, Shabir told The Standard that he did his job as chair of the committee and tabled the report as mandated by the House.

He said the Mwadegu committee, which basically looks into the use of funds in local authorities, also got involved on the basis of misuse of funds. Mwadegu declined to comment.