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{
    "id": 124523,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/124523/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 366,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "There are many Ministries that have been separated or split. I have talked about the Ministry No.15 in the list of the Bill, Lands, Environment and Forestry which should never be divided in any way because of the overlap. You talk of Ministry of Education and then you have the Ministry of Higher of Education. Which education is which? All of it is education. We need to synchronise our programmes right from pre-unit to the highest level. There is no reason we should have two Ministers serving in that level. Recently, we brought a Motion in this House that we should support not just higher education, but also colleges. But then, there were queries on who was going to handle those colleges because this is where we have Higher Educations Loans Board (HELB). Are we going to create another one called Lower Education Loans Board (LELB)? The confusion is not coming from the loans Board, it is coming from the structure of our Ministries. We need to restructure and reorganize ourselves in a manner that we do not create confusion even among ourselves. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock has historically suffered. We have had the separation of “livestock” and “agriculture” over and over and they are re-merging. Every time they are re-merging, somebody loses a job. There is a creation of disunity within Ministries just because we keep shifting people back and forth. The days when we used to have one director for Livestock and Agriculture are long gone. Then we moved to having two directors and they merged again. I think it is very important that we have a law that governs the creation of these Ministries, so that people can protect it even as individuals because they are Kenyans. When we hire them on trust, we cannot continue confusing their positions just because we keep creating and recreating. So, if we have a law that establishes these positions, we will always know what structures to have in place. The positions of Ministries will dictate how the structure is downwards to the extension units or interaction between Ministries and the public. It is also important for accountability purposes that communities on the ground get to know what livestock or extension officer is supposed to be communicating in relation to what the agricultural officer is supposed to be. Many a times we have sent very confusing messages because an agricultural officer who has also studied livestock is not supposed to be handling livestock issues. This creates confusion at the farmer’s level. The training of an agricultural officer is exactly the same as a the training of a livestock officer. The universities have not been able to distinguish between training an agricultural officer and training a livestock officer. But the extension level, they are the same human beings. Animal Health and Industry Training Institute (AHITI trains the same human beings and yet we come to separate them. We say the issues to be handled by the agricultural officer should not be handled by livestock officer because the Ministry of Livestock has its own extension staff. This is confusion that we have created. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I support this Bill and, I believe all hon. Members are going to support it. This Bill is going to restructure the Government in such a manner that we can deliver both at this level in the House and also at the extension level, because the Ministries are supposed to give services to the communities. So, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I do not want to repeat what other hon. Members have said. I support this Bill very strongly and I support that we actually fix it so that it is known how many Ministers we will always have and we remove this unnecessary cost to Kenyans. If you look at how the Ministers have delivered in relation to the cost, you will sympathize with Kenyan taxpayers."
}