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{
    "id": 1373430,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1373430/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 252,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. James Nyikal",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. This is an extremely important debate. The village elders are the feet on which the government is walking on the ground. Without them, there is no link with the communities. They are in all parts of the country. On security, they are the first point of call. If anything goes wrong in a village, they are the first people to know. They are the first people that the village people will run to. If there are strangers and suspicious occurrences, the village elders will be the first to point out. Even when investigations are to happen, whoever you bring — be they police investigators or any other person — the first point of call is always the village elder. They are responsible for maintaining harmony in our villages by solving minor disputes like those involving chicken thieves, people who engage in fighting, including children, and cases of people whose animals happen to graze in somebody’s farm. These are matters that could actually escalate into bigger problems. It is the village elders who solve such cases. Therefore, village elders are the people who take care of our harmony in the villages. Hon. Temporary Speaker, on the issue of health workers, we have passed a law and we are going to pay them for their services. Even in the appointment of the health workers, we are going to rely on the village elders. The village elders are the people who work with health workers. Even in our economic development, we put in place very important programmes but without the help of village elders, we cannot implement them. Look at the three main programmes that we have put up in this country. We are talking of the funding of education in schools – particularly in university education – health insurance and social protection. There is one thing we are all saying we are going to use to implement this – mean-testing. That is useful in identifying those to be supported with school fees when they are joining university. Who should be supported with social health insurance? Who are the indigents that the government should pay for? Who takes us to those people? It is the village elder. When we have new programmes like agricultural programmes, whom do we go to? It is the village elders. There is no way we can do without the village elders. We have relied on them for a long time but we have not looked at their conditions of work. These people are called out at night. Do they even have spotlights? They use their own money to buy their shoes. They are taken into areas when there are floods even without boots and protective gear. My colleague was saying they have uniform. That may be the case in some place where somebody decided to give them uniform but there is no laid down structure for giving them uniform. We need to support these people. We need to compensate them. They need a stipend. When these people are sick, they cannot afford to pay their medical bills. To me, when we are going to have indigents for whom the government will be paying for their social health insurance, the first people we should look at are actually the village elders so that they get their health insurance done. When we have bursaries, at least, in my constituency, I try to get the village elders. They cannot be pointing out to you children who need support and theirs are not taken care of. We need to support them when they need bursaries. Hon. Temporary Speaker, I support this Bill because it is putting in place structures that will organise these people. The Bill proposes recognition of village councils and village administrators. I quite agree that there is need to support them but there is an issue that we will have to face in the implementation. Many times, we have very good programmes but at the time of implementation, we do not do the necessary coordination. When we get the village administrators and the village councils under this proposed law, for example, how do we coordinate that with the county government structures where they have ward administrators, village administrators and village councils? Which council will be doing what? If we are not careful, it will not work. 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"
}