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"content": "It is very interesting that those people perform the roles I am mentioning and no one in this country has ever thought or considered to pay them. As I mentioned earlier, they have been in operation since 1963 up to this particular point and yet, no one is paying or giving them any attention for what they go through. Those people are leading the poorest life in this country. They are leaders in their own right, but they live demoralising and degrading lives and yet, they are performing functions for the national Government. No one is recognising them. Hon. Temporary Speaker, strangely in the County Government Act of 2012, they had a similar structure up to the village level, and from 2016 to 2021, they managed to operationalise all the structures as envisaged in the Act up to the village level. County governments are paying those village elders according to their format. When you look at their functions and roles, this is not equivalent to the amount they are paid by the county governments. They only oversight county government developments in the villages. I mentioned earlier the kind of work village elders at the national Government level perform. I thought the only way to appreciate them is by having legislation like the one I am proposing so that it can be anchored in law, and they can be considered for some form of remuneration. We are going through hard economic times and some of us may think that if we remunerate or give them some allowance, it will be a lot of money to the exchequer. I want to give an example of what I have in mind. Currently, an assistant chief relies on three village elders for a small area, and a maximum of five for large areas. Hon. Temporary Speaker, let me give you a scenario, where we have only three village elders and an assistant chief. Currently in this country, we have 9,045 assistant chiefs. Suppose each assistant chief has three village elders, for those who are good in mathematics, when you multiply 9,045 assistant chiefs by three village elders, you will find in the entire country, we have 27,135 village elders. Those are people who have not been earning anything but are performing so much in this country. Suppose we give Ksh3,000 as an allowance to the 27,135 village elders, the total for those who are good at mathematics will be Ksh81,405,000. This is roughly Ksh82 million per month. When you convert this into an annual expenditure from the exchequer; Ksh82 million times 12 months is Ksh984 million, which is below Ksh1 billion. Hon. Temporary Speaker, my plea to this House is we support those persons to start earning something for the work that they do for this country. Something interesting which this House needs to note about the same is that Community Health Volunteers, now being Community Health Promoters (CHPs), are persons who are offering free services, but the Government has come in. Those persons are dealing with health at the local level in the villages. They were not receiving anything but, currently, the national Government and county governments are considering them for some payment. As a Government which is considerate to hustlers, it is only good and fair to consider that group of persons who are hustlers or the lowest group of workers in the country so that they can receive something like chiefs for the work they perform. Another reason why I am pushing this Bill to go through is that many years back, in the 9th or 10th Parliament, Hon. Eugene, then a Member of Parliament, came up with a Motion. It received massive support on the Floor of this House, although nothing happened to the village elders. All the Members supported it at that time. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}