Wangwe promises to ensure all State agencies work well

Navakholo MP Emmanuel Wangwe elected Chairman of the Public Investments Committee on Social Services, Administration and Agriculture at Bunge Tower, Nairobi, on March 12, 2025. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

The Chairman of the National Assembly Public Investment Committee on Social Services, Administration and Agriculture Emmanuel Wangwe has promised to ensure that the 109 State agencies that they oversight live up to their mandate.

The Navakholo MP, who was re-elected to chair the committee two weeks ago, told The Standard that it is mostly in parastatals that billions of shillings of taxpayers’ money is lost and that there is need for stringent measures to ensure prudent use of their allocations.

Mr Wangwe said most of these government agencies sit on land that does not have title deeds, which attracts grabbing by the who is who in the society and there was urgent need for the relevant agencies to ensure that they are secured.

“We are calling on the Judiciary to expedite cases to do with land owned by parastatals. Situations where influential individuals have taken over land parcels that belong to the government under unclear circumstances should not be allowed,” Wangwe, a third term ODM legislator, said.

The ODM legislator cited land owned by Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), Agriculture Development Corporation (ADC) and the defunct National Hospital Insurance (NHIF) which have been encroached with cases in Court.

Wangwe said they will be looking at procurement processes in the state agencies which are avenues for corruption and they will be engaging with Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI to ensure cases of graft are dealt with.

He revealed that most of the agencies under their purview have issues in their Human Resource Departments and with some of them required to be merged in order to reduce the cases of duplication of roles which leads to conflicts over their mandate and waste of public funds.

“We have some government agencies that need to be privatized, some need to be overhauled, while some need to be merged so that they can be effective in achieving their mandate, as a committee we are going to ensure this is achieved,” said Wangwe.

The MP said their agenda will be to oversight the agencies under their mandate while working closely with the office of the Auditor General to protect the investments of Kenyans whose taxes are used to run them therefore the managements should be aware they will be held to account.

Wangwe said that they will be oversighting the Social Health Authority(SHA) to look into how it has performed its work so far, the shortcomings having faced criticism from citizens who feel that it has not been able to deliver on its mandate so far.

He explained that they will be looking at the Kenya School of Government agenda of training manpower in National and County Governments and that state agencies so that the state officials who are trained are ready to deliver on their mandate.

“I would like to thank President William Ruto and Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga for having supported me in my political journey and promise them that I would carry out my role in this committee to the best of my abilities,” said Wangwe.