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{
    "id": 1088300,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1088300/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 189,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, thank you. This Bill is very dear to my heart. I grew up as a little boy. Every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, we were picking coffee during harvest season. After picking coffee, we would put them in an ox cart and travel to three, four or five kilometres to deliver to the coffee society factory. When the payments came those days, it was an early Christmas for the families. On such a day, we would eat chicken and chapati. We would even eat rice which was only reserved for Christmas. Those were the days when the country and Government valued the farmer. I want, as I support this Bill to salute my brother the distinguished Senator for Embu County. It is not just now that he has shown his soft heart for farmers. When we were in Government together and in Cabinet, he continuously distinguished himself as a protector of farmers. He spoke and acted for farmers. Unlike many Ministers who sat in their comfort zones in Nairobi, I used to meet Sen. Ndwiga in the countryside wearing gumboots and walking in farms to see what the farmers were doing. He visited Bungoma and helped us to set up nurseries. His message of hope to the farmer was something to behold. Madam Temporary Speaker, today when you look at the state of coffee farming in Kenya, it is a pale shadow of what it used to be. My County of Bungoma in 1959 before Independence lent money to Her Majesty’s Government from proceeds of coffee from Bungoma Coffee Farmers Union. The Bungoma County Assembly premises was constructed from the proceeds of Coffee by the late Mr. Pascal Nabwana in the early 1960s. It is as good as it was then. Imagine with the madness of building brick and mortar everywhere, Bungoma County has not found it necessary to construct another County Assembly because what was constructed from the proceeds of coffee in the early 1960s, is still as good as any new structure today. That is what coffee has done. People went to school from coffee proceeds. Coffee factories used to give bursaries to students. Madam Temporary Speaker, then the disease of thieves came in. As the Mover said, you now go to a factory coffee, a clerk who has no single coffee plant is the highest paid farmer at the time of payment. It is because of loading kilogrammes and kilogrammes from every farmer. A farmer delivers 50 kilogrammes and the clerk offloads five for himself and credits himself until at the end of the day, he is the number one farmer with no single coffee plant. Our institutions of governance have to look at not only the white-collar criminals in big Government offices, but even persons in positions of responsibility, that impoverish the farmer down there. Today, when coffee factory elections are held, persons"
}