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{
    "id": 1180911,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1180911/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 297,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kisumu East, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Shakeel Shabbir",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 140,
        "legal_name": "Ahmed Shakeel Shabbir Ahmed",
        "slug": "shakeel-shabbir"
    },
    "content": "following the old routine. Just because certain countries have an automotive policy, we now think we must have one. I have read the 44 pages of this Automotive Policy. I am sorry to say it is a good idea but I think it could have been better if it was implemented 20 years ago. Now, they have come up with it again in another form of seeking to create an enabling environment for the automotive sector to realise its full potential and position as a major player in the industry and also aims to improve local automotive assembly ecosystem to expand local market size by promoting manufacturing. These are good words but literally, we are talking about the old petrol vehicles for the past 40 or 30 years ago. This was the Automotive Policy that was to be used for the Nyayo car which I have seen. India stopped importation of cars. They took an old Fiat model and built it 100 per cent in India. They called it the “Ambassador.” Nobody could buy a different car other the same model called “Ambassador” – not even the Prime Minister. I have sat in the said vehicle. They then started the smaller vehicles of 1000cc and nobody including the Prime Minister was allowed to go beyond it. I was in the 10th Parliament as a Member Parliament. We were told that they were going to ban all the four-wheel drive vehicles and instead, bring VW Passat and other smaller vehicles. This was done by none other than the then Minister for Finance, and the former President, Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta. What happened? They bought some Passat vehicles because they suited some people. They also found that the Mercedes were cheaper to run than the Passat vehicles, and the whole thing fell apart. If we look at our car parks, we are full of four-wheel drive vehicles which are totally inefficient with huge powered guzzlers. If you go to Westminster Parliament, people report on bicycles. If you go the Malaysian Parliament, they come in, in Malaysian vehicles and other things like those. It is a good policy; we wanted it for the numerical machining Complex and other things but we have taken and cannibalised the National Automotive Policy of other countries. Hon. Kiarie, please, read this policy well and put it next to the one for Malaysia or South Africa. Why do we now want to go for this? Ask yourself if you want to make it relevant for now. How do we make it relevant? We do not need to go and produce those old computers. We want to produce vehicles that are valid, hybrid and electrical ones and vehicles that can run on hydrogen or hybrid ones. When I was Mayor for Kisumu, we started with bicycles – boda boda as my brother says. They were not more 300 in Kisumu. Within a year, and with support from other people and the UN, we were over 10,000 boda boda bicycles. We then graduated to motorcycles and then to three-wheelers. Now the motorcycle is one of the most important vehicles in this country. You can move from point A to point B on a motorcycle. Many of us who do not care too much about big things have ridden motorcycles. If I want to go to a place where there is a lot of traffic, I will ride a boda boda . The boda boda is what we call grassroots economy; bottom-up if you may. So, what we need to do is to take on those bottom-up. Let us not go for the big vehicles. We want the lorries and everything else. Other than their engines and engine blocks, we have the technology to make the rest of the parts here. We can make those bodies and everything else. This policy says that a new National Automotive Council is to be set up. Who is in the Council? Are they those with the old and past way of thinking, the likes of Kenya Association of Manufactures (KAM) and Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers Ltd (KVM). They do not want to produce. Toyotas are selling their vehicles; the Japanese are selling their scrap vehicles here and we are still buying them. We are a consumer society. In my time I thought a Porsche was used for specialised people, but nowadays you see them here like anything else. They are not the Porsches we used to know. So, what we are trying to suggest here is, let us do The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for informationpurposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}