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{
    "id": 120314,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/120314/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 247,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Obure",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Public Works",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 118,
        "legal_name": "Christopher Mogere Obure",
        "slug": "christopher-obure"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to contribute to this Bill. It is my desire that we reduce the prices of basic commodities in order to make them affordable to the common person. I am aware that life has become unbearable in respect to certain categories of our population. Some families cannot afford food, shelter and medical care. I believe there is a strong case for intervention by the Government by way of ensuring that there are subsidies, especially for food. People will ask: What does that mean? Does it mean higher taxes? Does it mean certain categories of our population will pay more to make this possible? I think that through a carefully crafted scheme, it is possible to subsidize food to make life bearable to most of those people without increasing taxes. As a Member of Parliament, once a week, I have a session with my constituents in Nairobi, and my experience is absolutely astonishing. Somebody will come and tell you that he was a casual worker but he has lost his job. He will further tell you that he lives with his family, the landlord has locked them out, the whole family is out in the cold and he wants you to assist him. Somebody else will come and tell you that he has a patient at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) and they are unable to raise the hospital bill and, therefore, you should help them. Somebody else will tell you that he has lost a family member in a hospital and is unable to raise money to get the body out. These are the cases we receive as Members of Parliament from time to time and it is for this reason that I feel that there is need for an intervention. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we must also be careful and remember where we have come from. We have come from a regime which had price control, and it is also not a perfect situation. I remember the long queues that we used to have at the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) trying to get foreign exchange to travel out of the country. Those queues are no longer there because we liberalized the market. I have a private-sector background. I used to work for East African Breweries. In those days, the Government set prices for beer, cigarettes and other commodities. All we needed to do was to make sure that we maintained good relations with the people at the Treasury so that they could set the prices that we wanted to make the kind of profits we needed to declare dividends at the rate we wanted. That is not the kind of thing that we want. To a certain extent, I agree that the free market economy forces have determined prices and facilitated distribution of goods in a more sensible way. However, it is not acceptable to see what we are seeing today in"
}