Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1393432,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1393432/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 231,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for the opportunity. I rise to support this. Hon. Temporary Speaker, we have to live in the modern world. We cannot continue to do things in the old way. Climate monitoring and focusing are extremely important. There are very clear areas where we need to have this information. One is that everybody knows about climate change. The climate is changing, and the weather patterns will differ. We need to predict this to plan whatever we do in the short and long-term. If we do not have information, we cannot do that. We still depend on rain-fed agriculture in this country to a large extent. If we are to depend on rain-fed agriculture, we have to know exactly when the rains are coming to prepare the land and plant accordingly. Our farmers do not believe the predictions we get from our weather experts since we are not using up-to-date technology. We lose the seeds and fertilisers by planting when the rains are not coming. This will make it predictable. In fact, in some countries, if there is a prediction of when planting should be done, and the rains do not come, the farmers can sue the Meteorology Department. We cannot do that because we have not given them the technology they require, yet it is important. Looking at air and land transport, people travel the world in large numbers. Air transport is probably the safest. Being in a plane is 100 times safer than being in a car. That is because we have to know the wind and rain movement. That is extremely required even if you are not going on planes but on the ground and even in the lake. We equally get lost in the lakes. For example, in Lake Victoria, if we can predict and tell the fishermen that this is how the wind and currents will be, many people will be safe. We can be accurate for hours or even minutes if we use satellites. We also need to predict animal and bird migration and even disease vectors. We need to know when birds are migrating at a certain time. There is a problem that people in the Arctic, on the Island of St. George's, are worried about the bird flu amongst the birds. If we do not know or predict how the birds are moving, we can end up with an epidemic we are unaware of. Just even for mosquito control, we have been distributing nets, but we need to know exactly when to distribute nets. When we are doing indoor residual spraying to control mosquitoes, we need to know when the rains will come, when the mosquitoes will breed, and when we give the nets. We are discussing a Bill in the House on disaster preparedness and management. The biggest disasters we have here are drought, floods, and landslides. We can predict all these things if we have proper weather forecasting and monitoring. The only way to do it is by going digital and getting these satellites in the air. It will protect our people by predicting disasters and diseases and determining when to plant them. Thus, we will live in harmony with the environment. With that, Hon. Temporary Speaker, I support. Thank you."
}