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{
    "id": 1277884,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1277884/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 249,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Tigania West, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) John K. Mutunga",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "driven initiative does not realise quality in terms of the products. We need to belabour to create demand and in doing so, we need to go out and educate our people on business planning. I do not know the extent to which we have invested in business planning education. This is something that needs to be looked into and, therefore, we need to apprise our people on the intended investments so that they may think through on where they are looking for this money. When they get this money, in most cases they just utilise the money for merry-go- rounds. At the end of the day, they pay this money using other sources. It does not necessarily go to a business process, it may go to a normal livelihood support system. If somebody is a farmer, they may take these funds, buy fertiliser and put them in their farming process. We however, need to engage our people to look at the entire value chains if it is agricultural and look at where we have the best opportunities to give us the best returns so that they can invest in some of those areas. One of the Members has mentioned unsupported costs. This is an issue that I have had experience in, especially with respect to Women Enterprise Development Fund, the Youth Enterprise Development Fund and the Uwezo Fund. In most cases, the officers managing these funds have had to request for support from other sources to be able to run their businesses, organise conventions for release of the cheques and so on and so forth. I think that issue needs to be looked into; and even if we want to give Kenyans money at low cost, we need to realise that the processes costs some money and, therefore, it is important for us to provide for such. Instead of looking at the access to funding, we need to look at the management of the fund itself after access. There is need for qualification of those who take these funds and who actually qualifies to take this money. In other words, who should benefit? What are the characteristics of those who should benefit? For youth, let us say youths to access Ksh100,000 in a group of ten; and I do not know whether the Social Development Office allows such small groups to be put together. Individuals in such a group would have Ksh10,000 shillings and investments which are in most cases nonviable. Therefore, based on the business idea that those who are requisitioning this money are targeting, we need to see how to enable them to basically support what they are saying they want to do. This is because, in most cases, those who request this money have good business ideas, and if it is not fully funded, then we have a problem. The amounts themselves are low because it is group access and not individual. Apart from the National Research Fund, which is demand-driven, there is a research proposal, quantification of the various activities that are supposed to be done and the costing of these activities and, therefore, the researchers may get enough money to do the research because they are enlightened. What about those rural people who have not been enlightened sufficiently to be able to come up with such documents? We need to support them in a way that we realise it is a group access for individual utilisation; and if it is individual utilisation, what kind of activities do they want to finance, and whether this money given to them is enough. I support adoption of this Report and thank the Committee once more for doing a good job."
}