Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang’i left the house of senate in wrangles.
The meeting about the controversial implementation of the Sh6 billion digital registration system ended in disarray Thursday after some lawmakers expressed dissatisfaction over how Garissa Senator Yusuf Haji conducted the meeting.
Dr Fred Matiang’i who was accompanied by his ICT counter-part were given a clean sheet on everything by Hon Yusuf Haji which annoyed the senators.
The senators had invited Dr Matiang’i and Mr Mucheru to explain the critical aspects of the National Integrated Information Management Systems (Niims), popularly known as Huduma Namba.
However, trouble started when, upon the arrival of the ministers, Mr Haji, who chairs the committee on security, declared that the meeting was to be conducted behind closed doors, edging out the media.
This angered a section of senators who appeared to have been caught by surprise by what they said was a unilateral decision by the chairman.
“The meeting was restrictive. We didn’t interrogate the issue as much as we wished,” Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei told journalists soon after Mr Haji and the ministers had briefed the media.
His sentiments were supported by the Minority Whip Mutula Kilonzo Junior who said the concerns raised by his colleagues, and which necessitated the invitation of the ministers, were not addressed.
But Senator Haji argued that they had a fruitful engagement, and they were satisfied with the responses submitted to the committee.
Dr Matiang’i said he was pleased with how the session was conducted, but refused to discuss the matter further.
According to senators who attended the meeting but did not wish to be on record, critical issues such as practicability and sustainability of the system and why it was effected through the Statutory Miscellaneous (Amendment) Act instead of a substantive bill were not tackled.
“The kind of data which the government is collecting is a sensitive and serious matter. There is a risk we could run foul of Article 31 of the Constitution on the right to privacy,” Mr Cherargei observed, even as he dismissed Mr Haji’s assertion on the court case.
“The court case has nothing to do with our concerns. They are totally different matter.”
The lawmakers want the Ministry of ICT to facilitate a stakeholders forum where the issue of data protection will be discussed.
They also want the Senate and National Assembly debate on the Data Protection Bill, currently before the Senate, to be fast-tracked and adopted without the rancour that has defined relationship between the two Houses of Parliament.