Agriculture committee chair suspicious of meeting cancellation

Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources chairperson David Luka has expressed concern over the cancellation of his committee meeting scheduled for next week.

Luka said he does not understand why the meeting was cancelled when other committees have already met.

“All stakeholders were ready for the meeting and that [cancellation] is disturbing them. Top on the agenda was the Farm Input Subsidy Programme. Are they afraid that some issues would erupt from the subsidy programme? They were going to be squeezed,” said Luka in an interview on Thursday.

He said it was a big blow that the committee would not meet because there are several issues that government needs to explain regarding Admarc, National Food Reserve Agency, the Water Ministry and Ministry of Agriculture.

“What is the reason for cancelling? Why only one committee? If it is funds, Parliament is well funded,” he said.

According to the schedule released by the National Assembly, committees for Health and Population and Education, Science and Human Resources were scheduled to meet from January 21 to January 25 2013 while Women’s Caucus and Agriculture and Natural Resources committee would meet from January 28 to February 1 2013.

Parliament spokesperson Ian Mwenye said the cancellation was due to administrative reasons.

Mwenye said the cancellation affected all the committee that were scheduled to meet. However, other committees such as the Education, Science and Human Resources had already met.

“The whole schedule is cancelled. It is over administrative issue as we are preparing for the next session. We will come up with another schedule,” said Mwenye.