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{
    "id": 1228779,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1228779/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 268,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Mungatana, MGH",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the Committee should look at the possibility of making it mandatory for counties to commemorate this day so that we create that awareness. I also wanted to make an observation on the issue of privatisation without involving Parliament. I speak with a lot of sadness. In Tana River County, for example, there was once the Hola Ginnery, which was owned by the National Irrigation Board (NIB), now the National Irrigation Authority (NIA). It was disposed off. That site is now a shell of the past. No one is employed there, nothing is going on and it was sold off to people who are just prospecting on the land where the machinery used to stand. It should not happen again. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the same story can be told of Kilifi Cashew Nuts Factory, which was also Government-owned together with the people there. It is a shell of its past. Disposing off these assets without involving the voice of the people - the Parliament - should be a no-no. The people’s representatives must be involved and we must not surrender our power of oversight. We must know why the people interested in buying those assets, cannot buy shares in order to keep those assets moving. When people purchase these items in privatisation, they just dispose off that machinery at throwaway prices. People lose jobs and economies around those particular regions collapse. At the end of it, those people who purchase those assets end up being speculators on that land where that machinery stood yet the same machinery was bought with public funds. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, that decision must be really examined again, if it is there. I am urging the Committee that will look into the question of privatisation to protect the interests of the people. They must speak to the fact that those enterprises seeking to be privatised were running, giving jobs to people and running local economies. If at all we must go in that direction, we must find a way of sustaining those jobs, local communities and the lifestyles that were created around those enterprises, without destroying what the people invested in."
}