Members of Kazakhstan’s cabinet and heads of public agencies do not prepare well before coming to the parliamentary meetings and aren’t doing enough in terms of initiating new legislation, according to Yerlan Koshanov, chairman of the Mazhilis, the lower chamber of the country’s parliament.
«The cabinet is not doing enough in terms of initiating new legislation. As you know, there are loads of urgent issues that must be solved as soon as possible for the sake of our society. First of all, we have to solve these problems at the legislative level. Unfortunately, the cabinet doesn’t pay much attention to such work and never introduces bills before the parliament in time. This is why MPs step in and initiate necessary bills on their own,» Koshanov said during the joint session of the two houses of the parliament.
He also said that the cabinet should be more active during the parliament’s next session because it is necessary to speed up the process of developing and introducing draft laws to the parliament.
Also, Koshanov blamed the cabinet for dragging out the process of approving new laws. The delay usually is due to a long process of reviewing those amendments that MPs suggest to be taken into account by the cabinet.
«We believe that the cabinet should revise the procedure related to the approval process. We have just started this work and when the cabinet reviews legislative initiatives by MPs they shouldn’t think narrowly about the interests of separate ministries,» Koshanov highlighted.
In addition, he said that heads of public agencies are often poorly prepared when they come to the parliament for discussions within plenary sessions or working groups.
«The quality of their responses to questions raised by MPs doesn’t stand up to criticism. In our requests, we bring up acute problems our people, our voters struggle with. Unfortunately, the cabinet prefers to respond formally rather than provide a detailed response about an issue. If the cabinet goes on responding like this, we will invite members of the cabinet to respond to MPs in person. We have a right to do so,» the official noted.
On June 30, the first joint meeting of the parliament announced the end of the first session this year and Kazakhstani MPs have officially left for vacation until the end of August.
During the first session, the parliament reviewed more than 120 draft laws. As a result, 25 documents were adopted, 83 are still under consideration by MPs and 13 were signed by the president. In addition, the MPs held three joint meetings, 13 plenary sessions of the Senate and 15 plenary sessions of the Mazhilis.
