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"id": 1456507,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1456507/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Tetu, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Geoffrey Wandeto",
"speaker": null,
"content": "We have to ask this: What is important? What is the work of a Government? It is to provide education, health services, security and the rest. It is illogical for the Government to be in the business of milling cotton. Those are things that can be best done by the private sector. Can you tell me of any service that is offered by the Government, especially those parastatals, that does not have a problem? When it comes to power, we have issues of reliability, adequacy and many other issues. However, when the services are offered by the private sector, in many instances, they move swiftly and are even cheaper. It is time we started looking at the core mandate of the Government and ensure that only those functions are supported. As we work on this Budget, I want to echo the sentiments of my Chairman, Departmental Committee on Communication, Information and Innovation, that we must look into the future. We continue to allocate a lot of money in the traditional brick and mortar economy, and forget to be futuristic. If you go to the United Arab Emirates, they have a Minister for Artificial Intelligence (AI). They are thinking about futuristic things, where the world is going. We still have, and rightly so, an obsession with roads and water. Those are all good things, but even as we fix the past, we must also continue talking about the future, in terms of the amount of money that we can allocate towards research, AI, and how we are helping to build a futuristic Government. I support the Supplementary Estimates, and request the Chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee and his people at the Treasury, to continue making a budget that is purposeful and helpful for this country, going forward. With those comments, I support. Thank you."
}