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{
    "id": 1105977,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1105977/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 221,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Zani",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13119,
        "legal_name": "Agnes Zani",
        "slug": "agnes-zani"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, there is no debate at all about the importance for this. The Kenya Citizenship and Immigration (Amendment) Bill is very key in ensuring that certain definitions and terms that were not put into place are put into place. It angles this particular Act to ensure that the diaspora is taken care of, for example, a Kenyan living broad who is a returnee. It also gives key responsibilities to the CS for these very important developments that need to take place. The CS is given most of the responsibility in this Bill. I will go through them very briefly because Sen. Cherargei had gone through all these from point to point, elaborating each of them. There is developing and implementing strategies for Kenyans living abroad so that they can enhance their own development experience. The safety and security of Kenyans has been mentioned. Developing and implementing mechanisms for engagement with Kenyans living abroad, key associations, key interlinkages with ministries, et cetera, and establishment of administrative and institutional frameworks for the coordination of these people who are living abroad. This really ties well with the policy of 2014 that I mentioned regarding people living in the diaspora. There is a lot of work that is now being done by people who are living in the diaspora. They are coming up more and more to give their experiences on talk shows for example. They explain the various issues and experiences that are coming up and things that need to be addressed. In certain places where we talk about developing policies, maybe we need to update these policies. We look at the policy exhaustively and make sure that economic development, governance and democratic processes in Kenya are given in such a way that they try to incentivize these people who are living in the diaspora and ensure that we have a collaborative framework for this. Access to legal representation and renewal of passports is very key. We saw this at the time when we were shifting to the digital passport. Certain countries do not have a mission that is close to everybody within a particular country. You will that find Kenyans are told to go to the neighbouring country or to come back home for them to do this process. Mr. Temporary Speaker, somewhere along the line, I think the timelines were changed and that afforded more time to keep in sync with what was happening. It would help for people to know where to go to and where things can be digitized and we can use technology and also transfer organizations and systems, it would be very good. For example, the process for getting passports and visas in place is now done through automation and service providers who will take the passport, work on it and then bring it back. Yes, it is a tricky issue, but we need to make sure that at the end of the day, more services are expanded in whichever way. If it includes having more missions going closer to the people, that might be the case, especially where certain things need to be done."
}