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{
    "id": 1192526,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1192526/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 260,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ugenya, MDG",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David Ochieng’",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2955,
        "legal_name": "David Ouma Ochieng'",
        "slug": "david-ouma-ochieng"
    },
    "content": "exists so that they are able to do business in a manner that is cheap and timely in order for them to make money. I have been watching television for the last two weeks. People in Nyandarua are saying that, as the people of Pokot are dying of hunger, there are SMEs that have leased land and have planted potatoes and tomatoes, but they cannot access the markets. Infrastructure will enable those SMEs to operate. If they are doing farming, they should have good roads and means of transport for their goods and services to access the market. Investing in infrastructure is going to be very key in enabling the SMEs work. The issue of market exposure always amazes me. We are now being allocated new offices in Parliament. The furniture fitted in them is imported. Just imagine how much it costs? If you are to decide that the furniture in our new offices is going to be taken from our SMEs, how much would it be? We must expose our SMEs to the available markets. We cannot hope that they will sell their furniture to Congo or Uganda while us Kenyans are not buying them. If you visit our constituency offices, we too get furniture from the Muhindi shops and yet, down the road, you can get a good workshop with good furniture. In every constituency, we have a Constituency Industrial Development Centres (CIDCs). Some of those centres have very good equipment for fabrication, manipulation of metal and wood, but we do not go to them as the first port of call. If we do not have a policy implementation framework that requires us to buy things locally, we will have a lot of capital flight because we do not want to use our own. I have looked at what happens in the counties today, and I can attest that they buy and do a lot. If you go to Makueni and Siaya counties and check who has been given tenders by the county governments for roads to be done, you will find that it is not the young people or the SMEs that operate within their localities but rather, the expatriates. Nairobi people go to the villages to pick tenders papers, they apply them and after they win, they come back and invest in Nairobi. How then can we ensure that our SMEs framework requires that a certain percentage of those jobs, for example, of building roads, building dispensaries or supplying drugs or medicine is left for local SMEs in the county, if we are not deliberate in the way we are going to do this? I have always had a problem with the way we run the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) construction. We imported bolts and nuts worth more than Ksh3 billion. Those are things that our companies would have made, and we would have thus created jobs. We imported rolling stock and cement. As we speak, we have Governments buildings and other construction works that are being done... Kindly, give me a minute, Hon. Temporary Speaker."
}