Parliament grills cabinet minister over $10 million for peace institutions

By Oketayot Santo

The Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) on Thursday questioned the Minister of Cabinet Affairs Dr. Martin Elia Lomuro, over the allocation and transfer of 10 million dollars to peace institutions.

According to the First Deputy Speaker of the TNLA, Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, documents of authorization by the Ministry of Finance and Planning, and the Central Bank, indicated that the institutions were not paid their money in full, and in addition, the Cabinet Affairs ministry included two projects that were not part of the plan.

The institutions include the National Constitutional Review Commission (NCRC), the National Constitutional Amendment Committee (NCAC), the National Human Rights Council (NHRC) and the Judiciary Reform Committee (JRC).

Deputy Speaker Nathaniel said they have established that the funds were paid but the cabinet minister included two additional projects to the original amount which was not part of the allocation.

“We could not agree as parliament on the purposes of the fund which we thought was as per the attachment which was accompanying the letter of request to the ministry of finance and planning, the attachment had set of activities which later developed into additional extra activities being introduced after the funds was transferred”

“We are still going to seek further clarification from his colleagues, the minister of finance and planning and the central bank governor” he noted

For his part, Dr. Martin Elia Lomuro in his defense said acknowledged that that payment of 10 million dollars was made to his institution but the payment could not be made according to the plans 

 “Considering the financial challenges the amounts required by some of the peace institutions was downgraded it was reduced to nearly half in some cases more than half unfortunately it seems as if the new revised table of payments was not made clear to the minister of finance, I understand that because he was just new and may not have not followed the historical records of these records of peace implementations” he said

“The revised table contains payments for critical institutions of the agreement and two special projects that are classified those were now amalgamated into one table, the table that were before only contained the list of  institutions of the agreement, I think this is where the confusion arose” Elia said.