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{
    "id": 1433896,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1433896/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 263,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dadaab, WDM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Farah Maalim",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "for any organisation to put up the right cameras wherever there is a transformer. We already have a unit in the police force that is supposed to protect critical infrastructures such as these. We cannot continue having small cartels who specialise in sending young boys to vandalise such infrastructure and then bring those things as scraps for them to sell to the international market. They are copper, transformers and all these things. The exportation of scrap metals should be banned in the country. We need to ban it. We are a country that wants to industrialise. We can recycle the metals and use them to add value to our industrial sector. The penalties should not only apply to the young boys who steal these things and take them to a big person at the other end. Usually, handling stolen property should carry more severe penalties than stealing itself. The people encouraging vandalism are business people who want to export these things. They pull, aggregate and consolidate it then sell to the Chinese and others who send it out of the country. You cannot fight the symptoms of a disease. You attack the vector. Any developing country worth its salt and wants serious development cannot develop without an industrial take off. You cannot have an industrial take off if you do not protect your metals. We have to protect them. We are talking about having power outages and not getting our electricity because of this kind of thuggery, burglary and stealing these things. During the French Revolution, the famous princess said, “let them eat cake if they do not have bread”. The dirge of someone who is not from Northern Kenya befits the state we are in very well. We do not have the national grid in the whole region. We only have it just past Isiolo and up to Garissa on the other side. We do not have the national grid and electricity connections beyond there. We do not have electricity connection. All the things you talk about such as the last mile connectivity are news and music to our children, students, mothers, fathers and young mothers and fathers. While talking about these things, it is important to understand the need to take these developments to the four corners of this country. The only way to do that is to disabuse this very village concept of trying to reduce this country into the “villagisation” of politics and the politicisation of every small thing. We passed the Equalisation Fund when I was in the 10th Parliament. The principle and idea behind the Fund was for those old Northern Frontier Districts and contiguous districts that were a buffer zone for the centre. They were left out of development right from colonial days up to the time we got Independence. We had the Sessional Paper No. 10 to continue that institutional marginalisation of those areas. We had all those years by the time we were passing our 2010 Constitution. That is from the time we became a colony and protectorate of Kenya up to the time we got Independence. That was 30 years later after over 100 years of systematic Government institutional marginalisation of those areas. We ended up with a very small amount in the Equalisation Fund, 0.5 per cent of the annual revenue, initially distributed amongst 14 or 16 counties - Garissa, Wajir, Mandera, Lamu, Isiolo, Marsabit, Turkana, Samburu, West Pokot, Tana River, Narok, Kwale, Garissa, Kilifi, and Taita- Taveta. Those were the intended original beneficiaries. The area was expanded to call it Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) areas. These areas did not suffer over a period as we did. It was watered down. It was going to have very little effect. We went further and said that we were going to look for marginalised pockets in the rest of the country. Do you get my point? We were looking for them even in major urban centres. The idea is very simple. It was a way of trying to make sure that this country does not remain a united Republic of Kenya with one nation and one people called Kenyans. Nobody is 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."
}