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{
    "id": 1231080,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1231080/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 208,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kitutu Masaba, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Clive Gisairo",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "it is sports, gambling is at its peak over the weekend when sports activities are taking place. This is not the case with media houses because for them it is from Monday through Sunday, from 5.00 a.m. to midnight. For every hour, they have a different brand of betting going on. They camouflage it as a promotion or a way of trying to support business when, usually, it is not the case. How many people win in a month? How many people gamble? Hon. Mathenge, if this becomes a Bill, we also need to say that if they are regulated, there has to be a number of hours that any media house should be allowed to conduct betting activities. There also should be a minimum amount of money that any gambler should use to play. Betting with Ksh50 makes it very easy and cheap so that everybody thinks they can do it. The problem is if that person bets 10 times a day, they never see the impact until it is too late. If someone says the minimum amount is Ksh500, then there will be very few participants. But if you make it Ksh50, you will literally have a Class VIII child taking the grandmother's phone and trying their luck. The media should be a mirror of the society. They should not be the ones showing the youths that it is easy to get rich. Our youth now have the get-rich-quick mentality. You will find them in the villages with small radios following betting activities. They think that in the next hour, it is their chance to get rich. However, they get poorer every day because they gamble with the little they have. The media should help the leaders to fix the society. What is going on right now is not exactly that. What are the returns? Does the media declare the amount of money they make from the betting games that they conduct? Hon. Temporary Speaker, we should pass a law to provide that all media houses donate portions of the benefits they make from gambling to corporate social responsibility. This is not their core business and, therefore, they should share whatever they get with the society they got that money from. We should see them building schools with the same names they use for those betting activities. They should be compelled to give back a good chunk of whatever they get from those needy and poor people. We need to see them offering bursaries because people of means do not gamble on televisions and radio stations. They are normally the most vulnerable in the society. As Members of Parliament, we are the representatives of the people and we must ensure that we protect those vulnerable people. We should ensure that the media, which should be our partner in developing the society, does not loose traction and end up exploiting the very people we are supposed to protect. The tax laws should apply. They need to pay tax away from the media revenue earnings. This should be made public so that it is clear to the poor people that while they gambled Ksh100, someone made Ksh10 million at the end of the day. They should also know that chances of you winning is one in a million, and this simply means you will never win. Once the youth know that the chance of winning is too slim, then they will not gamble. They will instead use that money to start poultry farming and do kitchen gardening and develop themselves. Thank you, Hon. Duncan Mathenge. We hope that you will take it a step forward so that we put this into law and make sure that the media plays its role towards developing this country and protecting society from the ills of gambling. Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker."
}