Bill locks lawmakers out of CDF billions

MPs may be locked out of the management of the constituency funds if a new draft Bill becomes law.

The Bill seeks to align the Constituency Development Fund with the Constitution as directed by the High Court early this year.

In the draft presented to MPs at a kamukunji (informal meeting) on Tuesday morning, the role of setting up the committees at the constituency that manage the fund has been taken away from the lawmakers.

They will also no longer be members of the CDF committee, which was one of the main points of conflict with the law identified by the court in the judgement against the legality of the fund established in 2003.

According to the draft Bill, the CDF committees shall comprise a national government official designated by the Cabinet secretary, three men (one of them a youth), three women (one of them a youth), a disabled person, an NGO representative, a person nominated by the constituency office and an officer from the CDF Board.

KEEN TO MAINTAIN ROLE

The CDF Board is handed the job of nominating the three men and three women. It will also set out the required qualifications for a person to be elected a chairperson or secretary of that committee.

But these provisions, which effectively lock out the MPs, became the basis of contention by the lawmakers, who are keen to maintain a role in overseeing how the money, an average of Sh100 million per constituency this year, is spent.

Justice and Legal Affairs Committee chairman Samuel Chepkong’a spoke of the MPs’ discomfort after the Tuesday morning kamukunji.

“My colleague from Eldama Ravine is under siege,” he said in the afternoon reference to House CDF Committee chairman Moses Lessonet, who had presented the draft to the MPs.

“We have agreed with him that the CDF Bill that was presented in kamukunji today was just a draft. We have agreed that the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee will sit to ensure that Members of Parliament play a role in accordance with the Constitution,” said Mr Chepkong’a.

House Speaker Justin Muturi also backed the idea, stating that the relevant section of the Bill would be tweaked so that MPs have a role in the management of the CDF. 

Previously, the lawmakers had a significant role in the setting up of the CDF committees in the constituencies they represent.

They had been mandated with holding meetings in each ward where five potential members of the committee were elected and their names forwarded to the CDF Board officer in the constituency.

From those lists, the MP and the CDF Board officer would then select the eight members of the CDF committee.