The Speaker of the National Assembly, Moses Wetangula, has pleaded with Members of Parliament to stop harassing Cabinet Secretaries summoned by the House.
Speaking on Tuesday, January 27, during the Retreat of the Members of National Assemblies in Nakuru, Wetangula revealed that members of the Executive reached out to him, complaining of bullying by the MPs sitting on the Parliamentary committees, and asked the lawmakers to tone down.
"I have told some of your colleagues before that I get a lot of complaints that some of us bullying members of the executive appearing before us, which I discourage you," the Speaker stated.
He disclosed that heads of Parastatals who appeared before the house committees also lamented on being pried on by members and urged them to extend some leniency, especially if the issues found are minuscule in nature.
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"I had a case where an institution came running. They had a very small audit query of about 400,000, which was explainable, but the story around that was not a very good one from Parliament," the Speaker mentioned.
Nonetheless, he urged the legislators to expedite all matters currently under discussion in the house within the constitutional timeline of three months. Wetangula offered guidance on how the committees can handle operations.
"I impress upon the committees to employ the use of written submissions to make decisions, refrain from inviting agencies with clean accounts, commend them, and reduce rescheduling meetings with Ministries and agencies, and adopt a sub-committee model of considering audit reports," Wetangula added.
The Speaker called on Committees to consider spending when electing institutions to sermon, stating that the budget used to conduct the auditing may surpass that of the institutions summoned to the chambers.
His sentiments were echoed by theLeader of the Majority in the National Assembly, Kimani Ichungwah, who called on collective action among the MPs to enhance the effectiveness of Parliamentary work.
On his part, the Clerk to the National Assembly, Samuel Njoroge, stressed the importance of concluding on house business before the 2027 election to prevent a situation where Business Bills spill over to the next Parliament.
