THE CHAIRPERSON: Hon. Mliswa, would you be guided to concentrate your debate on the – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] –
HON. T. MLISWA: The issue is that we are trying to understand the relevance of Parliament but you cannot talk about the relevance of Parliament without talking about the three pillars of the state and then say, what role does Parliament pay? The Executive has got a role that they play but we are supposed to be equal. This is the point. But if we look at it, we are not equal in any way because others are capacitated more than the others, yet this Parliament here is the one that is responsible for oversight over everyone but it is paid less. How then do we expect this country to move forward when we have those who are supposed to be exercising oversight are less capacitated? Because of that, the relevance of Vote 2 being there is that Parliament having the role of oversight must be able to do it in a manner where they are not compromised. Members of Parliament here are looked down upon because of the welfare issue more than anybody else.
We are all Members of Parliament with the Ministers who are also appointed by the President but the moment that they are appointed to the Executive, we are different because of what they have. Members of Parliament spend more time in the Ministers’ offices begging for coupons because Ministers have a full book of coupons per month/week. If you look at it, how then do you expect Members of Parliament to also exercise their role? So, you have a situation where you will have one of the cousins who is poor and as a result, they also get allowances on the cars that they have. If I am not mistaken, I think they get cars every two years and they buy those cars at book value. A Range Rover costing $120 000, they get it for around $6 000 book value.
If you want to see the difference, go to any Minister’s house today and see how many cars are parked there. This is out of order yet in terms of performance as Ministers, they have failed to move this country forward. So, it is only important that we are all equal and being equal is also about the resource which is given to us.
The Hon. Minister of Finance and Economic Development is very much aware that the budget that he is going to allocate to the Members of Parliament have oversight over it and for them to be effectively capacitated, we talk about the researchers and the Clerks in Parliament. We have a situation where one Clerk serves three Committees and one researcher serves three Committees. So, how then do you expect us to be able to be discharging our duties in a professional manner when we are handicapped in terms of research and human capital? That is glaring and we do not have the time because we are not full time and we do not have the time to be doing research. The research for us is done by the Parliament staff which is critical in ensuring that this Parliament is mandated to do its job accordingly.
I want to talk about the aspect of the community information centres and the constituencies as well. There is no way that you expect a constituency to function without being resourced and it is that one car again that goes around. The cars that we get are not too hard for the terrain. We are talking about a land cruiser which is the only car which is able to make sure that these Members here are able to do a job because the Toyotas that you give us are not able to do the job. You need a 4X4 Land Cruiser, V8 with chrome – those new ones. Those are the ones that we want. Members of Parliament who are seated here, the only thing that they own is a car and if they are not given a car which has value and which gets them to do the job, they will not be able to do their jobs. We can no longer have a situation where when a Member of Parliament ceases to be a Member of Parliament, he or she is a destitute. It is sad.
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