Lawyer wants MPs empowered to act against agencies that fail to enforce laws

Jukwaa

📻 Breaking It Down

In a memorandum submitted to the Clerk of the National Assembly, Advocate Ekaterina Handa argued that the Statutory Instruments (Amendment) Bill, 2024 would help tackle delays and institutional inaction by government agencies that leave laws passed by Parliament without the regulations required to implement them.

The Bill, which has already been approved by the Senate, is now before the National Assembly for public participation.

Ms Handa has cited the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) as an example of what she considers prolonged administrative failure, accusing the commission of failing to formulate and gazette regulations governing complaints against judges and judicial officers despite being legally required to do so.

📌 What You Need to Know

She warned that the absence of formal rules had created uncertainty around how complaints against members of the Judiciary should be processed, leaving parties to rely on procedures that may not be clearly defined or consistently applied.

“This is not merely a procedural nicety. It is a fundamental safeguard against the atrophy of legislative will and the subversion of Parliament’s intent by administrative inertia,” she said.

The memorandum, dated September 3, 2026, was filed after the National Assembly invited members of the public to submit views on the proposed amendments.

Under the Bill, institutions given the responsibility of making regulations would be subjected to specific deadlines for completing the process.

More significantly, members of the public would be able to petition Parliament where a body responsible for making regulations had failed, neglected or refused to do so within the prescribed timeframe.

The proposed amendments would also make it an offence for a responsible authority to deliberately fail to perform the statutory obligation.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya

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