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{
    "id": 1012973,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1012973/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 254,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": ". They were in every village. They went to every homestead showing home owners how to have a pit latrine and maintain it, how to manage their drinking water wells, how to eliminate mosquitos by destroying their breeding areas around houses, how to clear rodents, and how to keep heath as a primary issue in every family. Because of them, we ended up with a very robust healthy population. Today, if you go to all our counties, health is 95 per cent devolved, but what we have devolved are problems. You go to the villages, health centres, dispensaries and all those units have no medicines. People come there just to die et cetera. It is important that we invest in preventive processes, primary health care where people are taught basics of hygiene. You may not be a rich person, but you may be taught how to have a balanced diet from the little you have. You may not be a rich person, but you may be taught how to collect water from the available spring and well and boil it and drink it without getting any diseases out of it. You may not have a lot of money, but you may be told to eliminate mosquitos from your sleeping environment. I remember small boys sleeping in my grandmother’s house. As we go to sleep in the evening, my grandmother would put some little dry cow dung in the jiko . It will smoke the whole night. That smoke would eliminate every single mosquito from the room and we would wake up very well. This used to happen in many homes. My grandmother never saw any classroom. The only thing she knew was how to recite a rosary in the Catholic Church and nothing else. However, she knew that we needed to eat well and to sleep in a clean environment. Every morning, the house had to be swept. Every Friday, the floor had to be smeared with cow dung to eliminate fleas and any other harmful insects that would come into the house. Every day something was done. We used to be conditioned to clear the grass around the house so that snakes could not come into the house to harm us. All this is basic health care that this Bill is talking about. What I hope will happen after we pass this Bill, is to avail sufficient resources because out there, currently, the avenue for theft of public funds in the counties is through construction and health services. That is where most funds are stolen. In many counties where money was sent for COVID-19, almost Kshs200 million in every county - my county Bungoma got Kshs213 million - they cannot account for it. They are calling meetings of people to play politics, trick them to sign attendance sheets and then they go and add figures of money as allowances so that they can appear to be accounting for the money. Madam Deputy Speaker, there are so many layers of employment going on now in the counties. If this was diverted to primary health care, lives would be improved. I was amused to read the other day that my governor has 168 casual workers working in his office. Obviously, these are ghost workers who are used to steal money. One hundred and sixty-eight casual workers in the governor's office, where do they sit in the first place? What do they do? Where are their names? You cannot find them and yet they are paying them every month. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}