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{
    "id": 1105160,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1105160/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 338,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nairobi CWR, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Esther Passaris",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 12475,
        "legal_name": "Esther Passaris",
        "slug": "esther-passaris"
    },
    "content": "to have 100 per cent surety that she will not get pregnant. If men do not want to have children, they can very well go and have a vasectomy. But, of course, when you tell men to have a vasectomy and be part of the family planning process which this country is in dire need of, they are scared because they think it will alter their manhood. What I can tell them is that it does not alter their manhood. If anything, they can enjoy themselves without feeling burdened by having children. So, when we talk about a trust, when people form a trust, it is because they want to trust certain people with their estates or to deny certain people access to their estates. When you have an Act, I believe we are trying to amend it so that we can make sure that the children are well provided for even within the Trustees Act. If you have a trust like the Karume Trust for instance, you choose people that you think are upright in society. You give them the mandate to look after the estate. Unfortunately, without strong laws, the trustees can very well misuse and abuse the estate of the people who had those trusts. The trustees can actually end up charging so much money for managing the trust. In the end, the trust becomes theirs. What happened with the Karume family is very distasteful. You will find that the family members who were supposed to be the beneficiaries of this trust never got access to it. They never managed to enjoy the fruits of their grandfather’s hard work. It is because he trusted a few people. So, there should be laws that also protect against unscrupulous trustees. At the same time, we should make sure that a trust does not go against the Constitution and creates illegitimacy of children born to certain powerful rich men who basically do not provide for those children. When I stand here, we know that we have so many single mothers. We know that we have so many widows. We have seen widows being locked out because, maybe, they are illiterate; maybe they do not understand the law, maybe they cannot access the wealth of these men that they were married to or men that they cohabited with or men who looked after them through a quiet parenting responsibility during the tenure of their life. We need laws that look at our society. We cannot borrow laws without understanding the psyche of the Kenyan society. I know that there are quite a number of Members of Parliament (MPs) here who, when it comes to looking at the laws, they worry about what would happen in case they drop dead. Will our burials be stopped because we have affiliated and not provided; we have affiliated and not acknowledged those women publicly? So, those women show up on the day of the funeral because they did not think you were going to die. But, people will die. So, I feel that as long as we have irresponsible men who do not want to cater for their children because they think it is the woman’s responsibility, we need stringent laws that would ensure that a child is not only provided for when the man dies, but also when the man is alive. I believe this amendment will ensure that, as far as our Constitution is concerned, there is no illegitimate child. Single parenting is a crisis. Women cannot be single mothers while at the same time the man is alive and earning an income and he appears in court and denies his level of income and he does not take care of his children. He only asks the woman why she got pregnant. It takes two to tango. It takes two to make a child. We need to make sure that a succession trust protects the interests of its beneficiaries."
}