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Mr Kennedy Chokuda, the Clerk of Parliament, recently spoke with The Sunday Mail Senior Reporter Lincoln Towindo in Harare. The following is Mr Chokuda in his own words.
| The experiences since my appointment as Clerk of Parliament in 2015 have been both challenging and exciting as the team I lead has been able to deliver the mandate of Parliament. |
As one would recall, we launched the Institutional Strategic Plan for Parliament (2015-2018) and also the funding arrangement for that plan.
Not only do we have a strategic plan, but also funding arrangements to the tune of US$11 551 000 and this support is from the United Nations Development Programme, European Union, Swedish International Development Agency, African Development Bank, World Bank and Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust.
This is a significant amount as it complements funds from Treasury.
So, for us, it’s a very big achievement, especially when you look at it in the context of the prevailing economic situation we are facing as a nation.
Those resources will go a long way in terms of supporting Parliament and its committees.
Reforms
My task as Clerk of Parliament had been simplified by the fact that the institution had just got through the process of coming up with that strategic plan.
The guiding parameters in terms of the expectations of the institution are very clear as outlined in the plan. My role now is to facilitate the implementation of that plan.
The plan’s first goal talks about aligning laws to the Constitution, and Parliament has played its part in respect of that role. Parliament and its committees have influenced amendments to 25 pieces of legislation in the past year.
These are not just minor amendments, but significant pieces of legislation such as the Gender Commission Bill, the Criminal Procedures Amendment Bill, the General Laws Amendment Bill and the Reserve Bank Debt Assumption Bill.
As we speak, we have been able, for all Bills that have come before Parliament in the past year, to conduct public hearings in line with requirements of Section 141 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, with the exception of the Labour Law Amendment Bill. Secondly, in terms of building the capacity of our committees to exercise oversight over the Executive, we have managed to train our committees, especially the chairpersons, in economic literacy so they are able to interrogate economic issues that come before Parliament.
For instance, when we held the pre-budget seminar last year, the legislators’ contributions were acknowledged by everyone who was present, including Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa.
He said it was the best pre-budget seminar he had attended. For us, it was a result of the process that we had put in place prior to that.
Working under the supervision of the Speaker (of the National Assembly), we conducted in-house capacity-building for our committees on the conduct of the work of committees so that we bring members up to speed in terms of what is expected of them when it comes to the Constitution.
As I indicated, the Institutional Strategic Plan runs up to 2018, so implementation is ongoing.
There are a lot of areas in which we have made improvements, but there are also areas that we continue to make improvements on like, for instance; while we have revamped our website to make it more interactive and to allow members of the public to make comments electronically and also to enable Members of Parliament to interact with the public, we still have things we would want to do.
For instance, we have made provision for social media platforms on the website and would like to activate those to ensure there is constant interaction between Parliament and the public. But we also want to go beyond that and make live video streaming available on our website so that even our citizens in the Diaspora can follow the proceedings in Parliament as they take place.In terms of capacity-building, it’s a continuous process because there are topical issues that will arise that we need to continuously engage MPs on.
For instance, with the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in late 2015, it is incumbent upon us to ensure MPs are brought to speed with what they are supposed to be doing in helping implement those goals.
If you look at the 16 Strategic Goals, nine are covered under the US$11.5 million Parliament Support Programme; so those are catered for in terms of funding.
But there are other goals that are not catered for under the funding arrangement.
Because of the economic environment that we are in, resources are a bit of a challenge.
So, implementation is lagging behind, especially in areas of capacity-building of our committees. We would have done much more with additional resources.
Sitting allowances and vehicles
What we did as Parliament in 2015 was to clear the arrears owed to Members of the Seventh Parliament. For the current Parliament, an agreement has been reached with MPs that part of their allowances will go towards extinguishing their debts in respect of the vehicles that were purchased by Parliament.
As we speak, there is no single member who has managed to clear vehicles (arrears), and Parliament does not owe members anything. In terms of arrears, off-hand, the figure came to close to US$2 million in respect of sitting allowances for members of the Seventh Parliament.
We have computed what Parliament owes the expelled members as the first stage, and we have communicated to them what they owe Parliament individually.
Because of the delays that we have encountered in this process, the next step is that we will approach legal practitioners to assist us in recovering the debt. But some have been forthcoming and have indicated that they are prepared to pay. Cumulatively around US$1,2 million is owed by about 40 ex-members, of those around 10 have indicated they are prepared to pay.
On members that are alleged to have benefitted from the scheme without signing loan agreement forms: what happened is that they did sign loan agreement forms but what happened is that some of the forms had not been initialed on every page as per standard practice admittedly there were a few that were not signed by individual members but we have dully engaged the members and everything has been rectified.
Road ahead
We are guided by the strategic plan and we are also guided by feedback we get from members of the public and we continue to responsive to the input that we get from members of the public.
On of the things that we are very keen on is ensuring our website is very interactive and that the public can communicate with us via social media.
Also we want to ensure the interactions with civic society and the public are taken to all provinces. As part of the e-Parliament programme to make Parliament more accessible and compliant in terms of technology, the Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Dr Christopher Mushohwe, has indicated that as part of the digitisation programme, a channel will be dedicated to Parliament.
That process hasn’t been completed and we remain hopeful that once the process is completed, we will get the channel which will enable us to beam live proceedings in Parliament and its committees.At the moment, we are able to broadcast Question Time every Wednesday; then the other sessions are covered on national radio both in Senate and the National Assembly.
Section 141 of the Constitution requires Parliament to make its proceedings open and accessible to the public, and also for Parliament to consult stakeholders on legislation that is before Parliament.Between January 2015 and now, Parliament has been able to conduct public hearings on all, but one of the Bills that have come before it.
Further, we have revamped our website, making it more interactive, and are getting close to 50 000 hits every month.Our statistics show that we have close to 60 percent of the visitors returning on our website, with 30 or so percent being new visitors.
We have also created a database of visitors who want to receive information about Parliament such as schedules.
Also we have held three stakeholder meetings that have been facilitated by the Speaker; one with journalists, the other with civic society and another one last month.
The idea is to take those meetings to all provinces.
Online Reporter