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{
    "id": 1105660,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1105660/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 342,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ugenya, MDG",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David Ochieng’",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2955,
        "legal_name": "David Ouma Ochieng'",
        "slug": "david-ouma-ochieng"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Social protection is not just about disbursing money. It includes building communities, offering psychological support, building families and doing things that will create cohesion in the nation. Doing a mechanical job of taking money and handing it over to people is a misunderstanding of what social protection is. The Constitution gives Kenyans the right to social, economic and civil liberties as well as cultural rights. So, to effectuate social security right, we have to enhance the National Social Security Fund Act. To effectuate the right to healthcare, what we are discussing this afternoon, and what has been in existence, is a constitutional health framework. The Social Assistance (Repeal) Bill is meant to ensure that we have a framework that is broad enough to take into account all the requirements for facilitation of the assistance of those who may need it, namely, orphans, jobless people, elderly and the sick. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I do not believe that the Ministry of Finance and National Planning has the capacity to set up the framework and infrastructure required for this kind of job. This is a job for the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, which the Government has deliberately refused to operationalise for obvious reasons. Every time we see huge sums of money, we only think that the Government should control it. That is why sometimes they take three to five ministries and put them together. They take three to five parastatals and put them together even in the middle of the term of a regime. You see the President transferring a certain parastatal to a certain ministry for them to control it because it is deemed to be lucrative. It is the wrong way of going about things. If the Leader of the Majority Party believes that the reason is to improve the way this Act was meant to work in terms of assisting vulnerable persons and other people who are not in a position to afford food, healthcare and medical services, then what I would expect him to do today is to introduce a new law or push for the implementation of this Act as it is. However, bringing a one-line amendment requiring that a law that was passed by this House is repealed, so that we give absolute powers to a minster is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding even on the part of those who have proposed this repeal. As we speak to it, we have Members who are yet to tell you that in every 10 messages they receive, five are about death, two are about sick persons and one is about school fees. It is all these things. Why would someone want to centralise this Fund by putting it under the Ministry of Finance and National Planning? I do not understand. 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."
}