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{
    "id": 1251090,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1251090/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 410,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wambua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13199,
        "legal_name": "Enoch Kiio Wambua",
        "slug": "enoch-kiio-wambua"
    },
    "content": "Whereas I appreciate the decision and move by Sen. Tabitha Mutinda to create the board, my only fear is that board may serve to speak against the spirit of decentralizing agriculture because that board is too Nairobi-centric, if I can put it that way. Those of us who were born many years before Sen. Tabitha Mutinda was born, we remember something that the former President Moi called the District Focus for Rural Development (DFRD) in 1983. This was a policy shift where he decided that we could not be sitting in Nairobi to make decisions about villages that we did not understand. So, let us go back to the villages and make decisions from there. Around that time, there was an explosion in the recruitment of extension service providers. That is the time that the board of DT and Yamaha motorbikes were moving around extension service providers to educate farmers on farming and all that. Sen. Tabitha Mutinda, the promoter of the Bill and the Committee to which the Bill will be assigned, I implore you to rethink about the board and ask yourselves whether you do not want to transfer those functions to county headquarters. Clause 26 of the Bill is the only clause that speaks to devolution. Again, I am reminded that there was a Cabinet Secretary who is now a sitting governor when things became a little bit hot, she requested for light duties. You have assigned very light duties to counties. Just the implementation of policies crafted and passed by the board at the centre. Why do you not think, together with the Committee, about assigning real responsibilities to county governments to recruit and assign extension officers? I heard Madam Temporary Speaker make a contribution and I agree with her totally. When we talk about licensing and issuance of permits for agricultural extension service providers, what exactly are we talking about? Are we looking at the private sector doing this service? My understanding was we were going to put an obligation on county governments to recruit officers to provide services to the farmers. If then we are talking about issuing of permits and licenses, then it means that we are encouraging the private sector players to come in and they have to be paid by farmers who may not be able to afford the services of those extension service providers. Madam Temporary Speaker, on the issue of Part II of the Bill, when you were making your contribution, I almost rose on a point of order to invoke Standing Order No.99 on anticipation of debate. Since I did not know where you are coming from. However, I looked and realized there was a lot of reference to Mung Beans Bill. I do not know whether this is an anomaly of the promoter of the Bill or it is because of the officers that helped her to draft this Bill. Madam Temporary Speaker, in serious jurisdictions I would be headed to court to sue for plagiarism because the contents of Part II of this Bill are lifted from a Bill that I sponsored, the Mung Beans Bill, which is coming up for Second Reading next week. The Sponsor of this Bill and the secretariat will have to completely rework Part II. What we are debating now belongs to another Bill. Somebody has lifted it from another Bill and inserted it here."
}