Gatundu South Member of Parliament Moses Kuria has exposed parliament's leadership over frustrating efforts to save Kenyans from high fuel cost.
The vocal legislator made the damning revelation through his Facebook page where he particularly singled out the Procedures and House Rules committee.
According to Kuria, the Procedures committee, where the House Deputy Speaker Moses Cheboi (Kuresoi North) serves as the vice chair, shot down a proposal to merge the Finance and Budget Committees which would have averted the conflict between government revenue and expenditure.
"There were murmurs that my proposal was to pave way for myself to take over the merged committee in the 12th parliament. Sadly my amendment was killed by the Procedures Committee," Kuria stated.
Kuria also accused the House Leadership which includes the Speaker's Office, the Majority and Minority Leader, the Majority and Minority Whip and the Clerk's Office of failing to accord him the necessary support.
"The rationale was that we have a lopsided system whereby the Budget Committee approves a Budget Policy Statement, the Medium Term Debt Strategy and the Financial Expenditure Estimates," he stated.
Terming the relationship between the Finance and Budget Committees as "a tower of Babel, budget deficit and macroeconomic anarchy", Kuria noted that he had tried to seek approval of the views by CS National Treasury Henry Rotich and Treasury PS Kamau Thugge.
In his submission, Kuria argued that by merging the two committees, it would be easier to match the expenditures with the revenues.
"Needless to say, the current impasse on Fuel VAT would not have arisen if we had the merged committee," he concluded.
The Gatundu South MP indicated that it would be impossible to shoot down CS Rotich's proposal to raise revenue through VAT as it would require a review of the expenditure to match the available sources.
Now we are in a mess. This is a situation my sweet mom would tell me: "I warned you about it."
