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{
"id": 1156208,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1156208/?format=api",
"text_counter": 115,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13131,
"legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
"slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
},
"content": "I know a line of 11 of these women in Mukuru, just next to some mjengo . They have all gone home. There is no business for them to do. This is as recent as last week. They have been very practical. I am sure that is the same case everywhere else. Now, they sell this to people in the Jua Kali and mjengo industry. However, they also cannot afford food since the construction industry has gone down. The price of cement has moved from Kshs650 to Kshs1,000. The price of all these other inputs has also gone up. While we can talk about the general cost of basic commodities et cetera, the onus is on us, as leaders, to then see how we can ameliorate the situation. Madam Temporary Speaker, this Bill is one of such initiatives in the sugar industry. What we had called Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) was one of the greatest misadventures that our country had sojourned into because it really reduced the focus on specific sectors within agriculture, specific sub-sectors, whether it is sugar, maize, cotton or whatever it is. That focus then got lost. What this aims to do is to refocus the Sugar Board and all of those attendant institutions to make sure that we can bring back to life this sugar industry. I remember when I was a child, as we were going to my rural home, every time we would pass Mumias and it would be bustling with economic activity. Kakamega was going to be a very serious city, just because of the economy around the sugar industry. However, if you look at the situation now, it is really heart-wrenching, if you see the level of poverty in the western part of this country, all the way into Nyanza, whether it is Muhoroni, Sony, Butali, Nzoia and all those sugar factories. You see poverty staring you in the face. I have a friend from this other part of the country, who said that we go together because I was going for a funeral in western. He said that we always complain that there are no good roads, but he could see very nice roads. I said: “Yes, you can see a road, but have you ever seen such a proper big road, but next to it is a grass-thatched house and a hut?” When you look at people you can see poverty in their faces and all they do is to put in effort and they get very little. Therefore, let us reform this. Madam Temporary Speaker, the biggest cause of poverty in that part of the country is sugarcane and maize on very fertile land. Only brave leaders will tell our people that we did not sign a contract with our people to do maize and sugar for you. There is no contract. In Kitale, we are moving from maize. We are doing coffee and avocados because there is no contract that we feed you. We stay hungry, then here you have your small plot and you are doing 10 things and minting money. We must change our outlook on agriculture. Unless we salvage this sector, a lot of land that is currently under sugarcane is going to change and it must. These are real livelihoods of people such that today a packet of sugar from Brazil that has been bought, is shipped and goes through the high seas comes to Mombasa, put it on a truck and take it to the gate of Mumias; it is cheaper than the packet of sugar we get from Mumias. It shows that we have not had an optimization, the sucrose value, high yield variance for us to do sugar. Is that what should be done there? While those radical thoughts go on, we must reform the sector through this law."
}