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{
    "id": 1354766,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1354766/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 120,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Abass",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13587,
        "legal_name": "Abass Sheikh Mohamed",
        "slug": "abass-sheikh"
    },
    "content": "In Ethiopia, guns are legalized and everyone owns a gun. Unfortunately, Kenyans are not armed and firearms are illegal. Therefore, Kenyans are the weaker side and need help to defend themselves. This has led to many Kenyans losing their livestock because our borders are porous. When the animals cross the border, you will hardly get them. If you get them, you will only recover one or two. It is not only in the pastoral areas. The agro-pastoralists within the highlands lose their animals frequently. My driver told me he had lost his cattle which were stolen from his home. These animals are stolen and slaughtered at night. The hide is hidden or taken immediately to where they sell it. It takes work to get the animals back. As a result of poverty and customary laws, when a young man’s cattle are stolen, and he wants to marry, he is told to bring 100 cows and 50 camels, and he will not get this. The only option he has for him to marry is to raid and steal. This is why you have seen that cattle rustling cannot be stopped. There needs to be policies in place to sustain the livelihoods of pastoralists. When the maize farmer gets a loss, the Government has interventions in place in cases of drought. There is a fund for this. Coffee prices go down when coffee farmers have great production, but there is a safety measure. However, security measures are not undertaken in the livestock sector, which caters to 15 million Kenyans the same way crop farmers are saved. There is no Government intervention in cases of drought, and pastoralists lose almost 90 per cent of their livestock. There is no system for restocking them. Pastoralists continue to live in poverty. These circumstances make them go and steal because of the lack of a proper policy, like in cases of farmers in crop production. When Somalia stopped importing miraa, the Government gave the farmers Kshs1 billion. In the last drought, we lost almost 100 million animals, and there was no compensation. There is a policy gap that discriminates against livestock producers. The Bill also highlights livestock branding, whereas the Livestock Branding Act exists. If you go to any pastoralist community, they have a brand that is not registered. We should move to identify and register the branding. These days, we have microchips; the Government uses this as a registration system where the animal's stomach is injected with the microchip, and the animal is easily tagged. Even if they go across the border, the animal is tracked. In cases where they are stolen, the Government will follow the last place where the microchip was removed. If you can enhance this, then we can trace the stolen animals. We had a Legal Notice signed by former President Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta. Legal Notice No. 87, which had most of these things including the formation of the Livestock Development and Services. He signed it, but up to date, it has never been implemented. As my colleague said, any policy concerning livestock is not taken care of. Many people survive and thrive on these animals. They sell them and use the cash to pay for school fees and food yet, it is not taken care of by any policy. There is no Government or anybody that cares about them. The animals come in the morning, graze on their own, move around and cause conflicts. Even the grazing polices are not put in place. The Constitution and the polices are there. It is the enforcement that is a problem."
}