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{
    "id": 1216591,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1216591/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 348,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make a few comments on this Bill by Sen. Mungatana in spite of time constraints. This is one of the most brilliant Bills that has ever come to this House. Resources define how societies thrive. Since the time of colonization, resources that are extracted from communities do not get to them. This is part of neo-colonization where a number of companies that are well-capitalized and resourced go to local communities and, take their natural resources without benefiting the local communities. This Bill proposes that we need to have a way of ensuring that natural resources from local communities benefit even if they do not have the capacity to exploit those resources. I come from Migori, which is one of the counties that has a lot of gold. We have seen people from Migori do not benefit from it, because they do not have the capacity to do proper mining and there are no proper structures to access the market. Migori County also has accesses to water from Lake Victoria. Madam Temporary Speaker, this Bill speaks to my heart. I will comment on three areas that Sen. Mungatana can consider to improve on in this Bill. Firstly, I implore upon Sen. Mungatana to not only think about a benefit sharing structure, but effective benefit sharing structure. This basically means that you need to be innovative enough to ensure that such funds at the national level are cascaded to the grassroots, so that counties ensure there is prioritization on how those funds reach communities to deal with their problems. How do we ensure that there is a way that we can empower local communities to be able to have enterprises tied to the exploitation mechanism? What this means is that we will ensure that communities are able to constantly have a share to the retail price of all the commodities that come from the extraction that we have. How do we ensure that this fund can enable communities to do enterprises that will last for longer and have a bigger share in the long term, to the extent that they can constantly be able to earn from these kinds of engagements with the private sector in their communities, rather than just depending on royalties, which looks like grants and donations? Madam Temporary Speaker, because of pressure of time, let me end with that. I hope that will engage more with my colleague to put some more input even in capacity building to these local communities, to deal with the issues that my brother, Sen. Cherarkey, was talking about; the effect of extraction in our communities. Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker."
}