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{
    "id": 1015687,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1015687/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 212,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba North, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Odhiambo-Mabona",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 376,
        "legal_name": "Millie Grace Akoth Odhiambo Mabona",
        "slug": "millie-odhiambo-mabona"
    },
    "content": " Thank you Hon. Speaker for giving me this opportunity. I sit in the Budget and Appropriations Committee and I support. Let me take this opportunity to thank the Executive for sorting out the impasse that we had in the Senate. I come from the legal persuasion which is the natural school of thought where I believe the law was made for man and not man for the law. Sometimes we may have to make political decisions over mathematical ones. I know there are people who are not happy with that decision. But I know, for example, when we went to Naivasha as a Select Committee, we let go of 90 seats that were for women so that the country could move forward because then we gave them to the men in the single Member constituencies, a decision that has come to haunt the House now. But we do not want to repeat that. We want to sort out this issue so that it does not plague the House again. Because of that Members have spoken to the issue of the parameters that are faulty. I just want to re-emphasise the parameters that are not very good. Even though land is presumed to include water, there is a problem because there is a big difference between the challenges you face when you have mass of land and mass of water. I represent seven islands one of which you go to on water for one-and-a-half hours on a speed boat. If you are doing development in that area, if you want to do roads, most of the contractors do not want to go there because mobilising just one tractor costs Ksh500,000 when on land it costs Ksh70,000. So, if you do not factor in waterways as an issue together with roads, then you are not being realistic. So, we need to put water as a parameter that is access to water and waterways. There is a presumption that people who are around Lake Victoria have access to water. If you go to Mfangano Island in a place called Soklo, the first time I attempted to go there before motorbikes, I did not reach because I did not have the physical capability. Right now, I use three different means of transport to reach there. I use a four-wheel drive motor vehicle which goes up to a point, a motor bike up to a point then I walk for the rest of the way. So, we must also factor all those issues. Talking about agriculture without mentioning fisheries is also very lopsided because fisheries and agriculture are totally two different things. If you do not factor in fisheries, the challenge is that we will not be looking at the challenges that fisheries have when actually the mainstay in constituencies like mine is fisheries and not agriculture. We have agriculture but the greater bit of it is fisheries. We also need to unpackage what we mean by poverty. Does it include, for instance, mortality rates, and if so, for which year and time? For instance, in my constituency the mortality rate is 37 per cent. I think, it is the highest in the country. If we factor it in, how do we look at issues such as that? The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}