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{
    "id": 1219262,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1219262/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 128,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Gilgil, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Martha Wangari",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "The previous Government had something like an exhibition on a day they called the EPZ day at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) and this is an idea that the Ministry of Trade and Industry should consider. If you want to buy a pair of jeans - by the way, I have bought one from the EPZ and they have very good quality jeans, but how many people even know where to get them? How do we know where to flag out the 20 per cent that come to the market if you want to buy them? I know we wanted to control a little bit so that we do not open the market where one goes there to buy at cheaper prices and then comes to sell at wholesale. However, one should get a dress, an overall or a pair of jeans if needed so that we can open this market and keep the EPZ afloat. Last Friday, His Excellency President William Ruto was at Gilgil during the National Youth Service (NYS) pass-out parade and we had a cohort of 10,600 passing out. This time, it will be almost 20,000 youth passing out. The quality of work done by our NYS is amazing in terms of the police. We do not even have to go to China or outside the country. We have the workmanship, training, capacity and more importantly the labour. That available labour in all the NYS colleges should be looped together with the EPZ so that we have absorption. It does not make sense if you do paramilitary training for the almost 11,000 youth, fail to absorb them and leave them on the streets with that kind of training. They have done capacity building and have the knowledge and the machinery. What we should be looking at even as we empower the EPZ, is to loop them in to ensure that we have more zones not just at Kitengela, but expand to the other parts of the country where we have NYS training colleges, where we have available labour and ensure that we put that into use. Let us also get the Government to continue supporting the EPZ, especially through funding that is timely and assured so that they can project how much their production would be. Also, by opening up, they can link to the tendering process of the Government. When we say Small and Medium Enterprises register in EPZ, one qualification that you need to get that licence for an SME is that your company should be over 75 per cent locally owned. That means that we will be absorbing many of these SMEs to tap into the resources. We have a lot of Government tendering going on, today as you have heard Members speak, they have recruitment going on for more than 2,000 Kenya Forest Service rangers. These officers will need uniforms and boots, each more than a pair. We have other forces like the Kenya Police and the NYS themselves. They have uniforms that they wear every day and ceremonial ones. This applies to all the uniformed forces in the country. In terms of capacity, we can utilise what we have; the EPZ and the NYS labour, so that we can supply our uniformed forces and the private sector such as G4S and other uniformed private security. We should open up this market for the EPZ and keep them afloat. Anywhere there is an industry of any kind, it does not only touch on the people inside the industry, but it affects the whole community around it. If you go to the EPZ in Kitengela, you get people who need food daily. This means there is need for someone to supply that food. That is exactly what we are looking for so that we can change our communities and the country bottom-up-wise. This is the way to do it through the EPZ. I hope we can nurture this, give more incentives and licence more companies that are small and medium enterprises to take advantage. Otherwise, what do we mean when we say “we are incubating small businesses?” It means if you get these tax holidays and the sheds, you can do your work at a lower cost of production so that you maximise on one’s mark-up in terms of profit. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}