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{
    "id": 135493,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/135493/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 301,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Musila",
    "speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Defence",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 94,
        "legal_name": "David Musila",
        "slug": "david-musila"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. I stand to support the Motion and I want to join my colleagues in appreciating the work that the Ministry of Industrialization is doing for this country. However, when you enter any supermarket or any shop in this country, 99 per cent of the goods that you find in those shops are imported, yet we have been having the Ministry of Industry or by whatever name, Trade and Industry, since Independence. I think we have lost track somewhere. I think it is high time that the Ministry goes back to the drawing board. I recall during those days, we had the Kenya Industrial Estates (KIE). Those industrial estates were molded in a fashion that we were to grow industrial entrepreneurs to eventually become industrialists. But regrettably as is the case with many of our institutions, the KIE died. Therefore, how do we expect to industrialize this country when we do not have a base where we train young entrepreneurs to become industrialists so that they can make industries? No wonder all our industries today in this country are owned by foreigners and the indigenous people have no capacity to make industries because the Government and the Ministry have from the beginning, failed to develop industries through the KIE. Therefore, I call upon the Minister to look into this area and see whether he can restart the KIE. Some buildings still exist and perhaps he can expand it. The spokesman of the Committee lamented about the J ua Kali . I agree with him that it is high time we developed something else; gave a better name because people tend to look down upon goods that are manufactured by the informal sector. For anything that is bad, people say that is Jua Kali . How do we expect to develop an industry through a system where people do not have confidence in the goods that are manufactured? So, let us move from Jua Kali, I agree with the Chair, and develop something else that people are going to have confidence in, so that they buy these goods. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, every day, we hear of substandard goods and fake goods being offloaded from ships from the Far East. This has played a major role in killing the local industry. I do not think enough is being done to stop those goods from entering our Kenyan market. Walk in the streets and you will see many uncustomed goods, some fake goods. We must know as Kenyans that for every imported good that we purchase, we are putting some foreigner somewhere in another foreign country to work and misplacing our people. Why is that so? Our shoe industry, for example, which is as old as this country, Bata Limuru, has been unable to grow and wherever you go, you find cheap shoes from Korea being sold all over. Where do they pass through and yet they cannot last? Why are consumers not protected? Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to applaud Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) for coming up with a new method to standardize goods. But it is one thing to standardize goods and another to enforce those standards. Therefore, I call upon Kenyans to support KEBS. I call upon the Government to have confidence in KEBS and support it in its quest to standardize goods and enforce the standards. The KEBS should"
}