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{
    "id": 1111266,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1111266/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 353,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Keiyo South, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Daniel Rono",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13367,
        "legal_name": "Daniel Kipkogei Rono",
        "slug": "daniel-kipkogei-rono"
    },
    "content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to also weigh in on the ratification of this Protocol. First and foremost, I thank the Committee which has handled this Protocol. I also thank my brother, Hon. Sankok, for the comments he made on PWDs and the elderly, and also as my colleagues have also mentioned. If you travel to the developed world like the United States of America and Europe, there is a category of people called senior citizens and PWDs. They do not play games with those individuals. They give them the decency and the respect they deserve. It is ridiculous that we do not do so in Kenya. You sometimes even go to the streets and find a disabled person begging and maybe the mistake that that person made was being born disabled. This Protocol has come late. We have just talked about the cash transfers programme that is now addressing the plight of our senior citizens. We start a very good thing of giving our senior citizens who are 70 years old and above cash transfers and then we do not follow it through. We are even failing in this House. What are we doing about it? Year in year out, and month in month out, we are told that there are delays of three months or six months. Some elderly persons have not been enlisted while others have been enlisted, but they have not received any cash. The fingerprints of others could not even be captured. Elderly people are dying day in day out. They will never even enjoy the cash transfer programme. So, we need to be serious about the cash transfers. We need to make the individuals concerned in the ministry to appear before the relevant departmental committee, so that this matter can be given top priority. Sometimes you find money being squandered left, right and centre and then we see our senior citizens, who have served this country over the years, not being given the decent life they deserve. I have just talked about the way senior citizens are taken care of in the developed world. We need to borrow a leaf from them because if you even enter a matatu or a bus, immediately a senior citizen enters that bus, if you are seated and you are 30 or 40 years old or below, you automatically give up the seat for the senior citizen. We need to give the same respect that we see out there to our people right here in Kenya. The PWDs and the senior citizens deserve respect, decency and attention. So far, we are not giving them the attention they deserve. I commend Hon. Sankok for always fighting for them left, right and centre. We should support him as much as we can. With those remarks, I support."
}