Members of Parliament (MPs) are set to reintroduce the abolished Question Time during House sittings in a bid to compel Cabinet Secretaries to offer responses.
The new amendment was proposed by the Procedure and House Rules Committee which is chaired by National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi.
Question Time will give MPs the opportunity to ask 10 to 15 brief questions that will be published in the Order Paper every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
The involved CS will then be required to appear before a relevant committee and offer the reply to the question.
[caption caption="Image of a past joint parliament session"]
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The Muturi-led committee argued that the reintroduction of QT would reduce the amount of time used up by MPs when debating replies offered by committee chairs to the House.
"The requirement that chairs of committees respond to members' questions faced challenges, as they could not comprehensively speak on behalf of the Executive," a report by the committee read in part.
The Speaker will further have the authority to reject a question in case the member does not adhere to the rules.
"The Speaker will have the power to drop any question asked, especially if the member is absent, while responses to written questions will be sent directly to members instead of committees," the report further stated.
QT from the 11th Parliament generated 391 questions for the CSs and of these 118 were responded to in the 12th Parliament. Of the 73 requests made and 31 submitted, only 15 were replied.
Interior CS Fred Matiang'i and ICT CS Joe Mucheru have in the past angered the MPs after failing to honour summons pertaining to matters of great public interest.
Often times the CSs have apologised for the failure to attend in person stating that they are elsewhere engaged in matters of national importance they, however, send representatives.
[caption caption="Interior CS Fred Matiang'i speaks during a past appearance before Parliament"]
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