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{
    "id": 1094428,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1094428/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 310,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kiminini, FORD-K",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) Chris Wamalwa",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1889,
        "legal_name": "Chrisantus Wamalwa Wakhungu",
        "slug": "chrisantus-wamalwa-wakhungu"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity. First, I thank Hon. Jaldesa for bringing this Motion to the House. The responsibility of a nation is to provide security and food to its citizens. It is, indeed, embarrassing that we cannot feed the citizens of this country. We have climate change. What Hon. Jaldesa has mentioned is not something new. We expect the Government to have planned. We have the Meteorological Department which is supposed to have forecast for this. There is an American philosopher called Benjamin Franklin who said failing to plan is planning to fail. The responsibility of planning belongs to Government. We would like to empathise with our colleagues the pastoralists, particularly those from the North Eastern Region. I had an opportunity to visit there. I did not know that the Leader of the Majority Party had not gone there. He was a Minister for Lands and Minister of Finance. I expected him to have gone there. You think you are not part of Kenya when you are in those regions. In fact, when they are travelling they say, “we are going to Kenya’’. I had an opportunity as a consultant for the European Union to travel to Mandera, Garissa and Wajir. You will think you are not in Kenya. Because they are part and parcel of us, the Government has a responsibility to allocate budgets to those areas, particularly when it comes to this NDMA. This authority is there but when it comes to the level of funding, it is given something very insignificant that cannot mitigate these issues of drought. As we are here today, I call upon our colleagues. When you read the Constitution, Article 95 is very clear. It says the national Parliament, the National Assembly, can deliberate and resolve any matter of national importance, like what we are discussing today. So, we call upon our colleagues to expedite measures and declare drought a national disaster in this country. The import of doing this is to attract more funding. It will attract even the donors, even the NGOs. Wherever the NGOs are, they should move quickly to those areas so that they can save them and save their livelihood. When you look at the livestock, which is their critical livelihood, some of them are dying. When you have a malnourished product and you go to the market, you will have to sell it at a throw-away price. This is something that our colleagues are facing. In this country, there was an element of livestock insurance. How far did the Government go with the livestock insurance programme? Farmers are losing their livelihoods. Insurance would have been a remedy to help in mitigating these risks. As we speak, we are here today and this Parliament is a budget-making House. This suffering must stop. 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."
}