Team seeks to unblock implementation process

A parliamentary committee has requested for a timetable of actual dates within which Bills to implement the Constitution are expected in Parliament.

The Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee asked relevant authorities to submit the schedule within a week. This was after a crisis meeting with Attorney General Amos Wako, officials of the Commission on the Implementation of the Constitution, Kenya Law Reform Commission and Commission on Revenue Allocation over delay in passing Bills.

The commission chairman Mohammed Abdikadir told The Standard yesterday they expect the list by Thursday following consultations with Head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura, the PS in the Prime Minister’s Office Mohammed Isahakia and ministers from ministries formulating the Bills.

"The civil service is central to the process. It is the ministries that are supposed to generate the raw material for the Bills not the CIC. We want to unblock the process," he said.

Enough bills

He said the meeting examined the bottlenecks impeding the process and how to clear them so that the Bills can flow to Parliament smoothly.

"We want enough Bills in the next couple of weeks. Soon we will be into the budget cycle and we should have passed several by then," Abdikadir said.

It followed concerns over the slow pace of enacting a raft of Bills required under the new Constitution, which has prompted a blame game between Parliament and the Executive.

President Kibaki urged MPs to pass some 25 Bills within three months when he addressed a special sitting of Parliament last month but nearly one month later none of the Bills has been debated.