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{
    "id": 1231034,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1231034/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 162,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dadaab, WDM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Farah Maalim",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "The media has become powerfully savvy that we have one of the highest numbers per capita access to mobile services. On per capita basis, I believe it is the highest in the continent. Our children and everybody else have access to mobile phones. Because of that access, all the poor people see somebody who has made one million or two million shillings by betting with, say Ksh100 or Ksh200. Because they are living in such an awful and difficult life, that person says: “Maybe I could try that and hit a jackpot”. That is how gambling feeds itself progressively. It continues that way. Eventually, you become addicted to it and you steal to gamble. You use everything you have. I remember many years back, there was an Indian gambler who had misused his family's money to the last coin. You know Indians have a culture in which the father pays the dowry for the daughter to get married. I think he went and took a loan to get his daughter married. Because he was a compulsive gambler, he went and gambled everything away. He could not forgive himself. He chopped off his right hand. It was in the media those days. What we need now is a very powerful Government regulation on this activity. School drop-outs and low grades are out there. Truancy is widespread. So, when you are called by somebody from a school that they are unable to pay fees, ask them to give you the parents' phone numbers. Maybe, fees were given to the child and he or she gambled it all. So, he has to look for money from other places like the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF). Occasionally, you meet the parents and ask them how much money they gave to the child. Then you realise that the child is playing games with you. It is unlike when they pay fees directly to schools. Nonetheless, this thing has had a big effect across the society. It is now happening even in the villages and the very backward rural areas - backward in the sense that there is no infrastructure and there is very little to show in terms of Government services and other infrastructures. You will find a young person in school or college with a smart phone that costs about Ksh60,000 or Ksh70,000 and yet, he or she has a problem raising Ksh5,000 or Ksh10,000 for fees, or even fare to get to an institution even when the NG-CDF is paying for the rest of the items. One of the things that is really feeding into those things is those very bad behaviours. I agree with the previous speaker as well as the Member of Parliament for Nyeri. With regard to 'urging', I am sure you are trying to get us into the process of creating a Bill that will seek to control this thing. I am happy about that, but as the Hon. Temporary Speaker says, maybe, you should have done something a bit stronger than 'urge'. Nonetheless, do not leave it at this stage. Proceed and make sure that the Bill is in place. If you need my assistance or that of the Hon. Speaker, we will be willing to help you because we really need to bring this country’s future generation to certain sanity. We used to say in the past that it is mothers who carry the burden of this nation. It is because if you give a man money, he may use it on Miraa, for drinking, and so on. But when a mother has money, she takes it to her children. Things are different now because with betting, a mother facing hardship in the house may easily be lured to use the little money she has, say, Ksh100, to bet hoping she could win Ksh1 million. She would be doing it out of the desire to develop her own family. She could easily get sucked into this compulsive behaviour. So, that is also a problem. Even the safe areas that we had before are now in danger. Remember it is the womenfolk and mothers of this country who hold our families and this nation together."
}