Make parliamentary committees effective

Parliament in session. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Cases abound where ministries and government departments have been given a clean bill of health when there are obvious questions about their expenditure.
  • There are two explanations — that members are bribed to vote in a particular manner or that they are coerced to make decisions.
  • Most members sitting in the various committees do not have the competence to understand and interrogate public accounts reports.

Concerns are increasing about the role of parliaments in monitoring and checking government expenditure.

Cases abound where ministries and government departments have been given a clean bill of health when there are obvious questions about their expenditure.

Members of the oversight committees — Public Accounts and the Public Investments — have been faulted on several occasions for clearing expenditure that is patently dishonest, raising questions about their objectivity.

There are two explanations — that members are bribed to vote in a particular manner or that they are coerced to make decisions based on party and even ethnic considerations.

Whichever the case, they fail to execute their oversight role, to the detriment of the taxpayers.

These are some of the issues that have featured predominantly at the ongoing African Organisation for Public Accounts Committees in Nairobi, with the bodies being accused of doing little to curb corruption and pilferage of public resources.

Beside the real danger of undue influence, most members sitting in the various committees do not have the competence to understand and interrogate public accounts reports and are easily taken in by scheming bureaucrats.

This is because selection to the committees is not determined by knowledge or experience, but loyalty to political parties.

In fact, most members only make technical appearances to committee meetings to earn their allowances. 

Even when, occasionally, the committees do their work properly, their recommendations are not implemented.

Kenya’s Parliament is replete with various reports of the oversight committees, none of which has seen the light of day.

The meeting, therefore, needs to critically examine how the committees are constituted, how their roles are executed, and the impact of the reports on governance.

Where do the committees fail? What should parliaments do to compel governments to take action on reports by oversight committees?