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{
    "id": 1223579,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1223579/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 96,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Oburu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 194,
        "legal_name": "Oburu Ngona Odinga",
        "slug": "oburu-odinga"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, having said that, I also stand to support this Motion. This is a very important Motion. It is something which is very popular in the developed world, but here in our country, people give it a second line. They put it at the back of the business, yet it is a very important council. I remember when I was a young boy, my father who was a teacher knew the importance of planting trees. He knew the importance of trees affecting rainfall. I remember me and my young brother, Raila, used to stay in Bondo in the rural areas. Our father used to work in Kisumu, but he would give us an assignment to plant trees. He would then come to supervise us every weekend to ensure that we not only plant trees, but we also protect them against destruction by the animals. He also made sure that we watered them so that they started growing until they reached maturity. Some of the trees we planted in the early 1950s are still there. I will take some of you who are my friends like Sen. Cheruiyot to come and see some of those big trees we planted in the early 1950s. I live around the lake. My constituency and my county are around Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria is more or less like a rain shadow. It is a rain shadow because there is evaporation which takes place. This evaporation goes to Kericho, Kisii and Nandi Counties. They benefit from the lake, but we do not benefit from the lake because there is little rainfall around the lake. So, we are more or less a semi-arid county or our counties around the lake are more or less semi-arid. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the best for us would have been to harvest water which comes from all our rivers. In fact, most of the rivers draining into Lake Victoria are from Kenya. They all drain coming from Nandi County, from Kericho County like the Sondu Miriu River, Nyando River, then the Nzoia River coming from those hills around Cherangany and so on. They drain not only the water, but they also go with our topsoil, which is the most fertile. All of it goes down up to Egypt. Egypt has a big dam which is called Aswan Dam and they use our water to do irrigation, produce electricity and then grow food and export back to us. This is a very serious situation, and we hope that the Government is taking note so that some of these rivers can be dammed like the Koru-Soin Dam. Sen. Cheruiyot, please, let us work together and see that that dam is actualized so that it can produce electricity and it can also control the floods downstream. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we cannot overemphasise the importance of climate change. Our country is experiencing a very serious drought which we have never had in the last 40 years. Personally, I only experienced this kind of drought in 1952 when I was still a small kid. This kind of drought was called arongá in my area. The Government of the day does not appear to realise that we are going through a very serious situation. This country is in Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The Government of the day is behaving as if it is a normal situation. They are still using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescriptions which they know brought a lot of trouble for very many governments in the 1980s and in the 1990s. Mr. Speaker, Sir, there are governments which collapsed just because of taking the IMF prescriptions which our Government is taking. There is nothing wrong with the"
}