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{
    "id": 1456701,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1456701/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 4091,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Limuru, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Eng.) John Kiragu",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "They are taking care of their youth while our youth here who have gone to universities and have been trained in certain skills are the ones who do the jua kali work, like hawking imported things. Sometimes, you ask yourself; “Did someone have to go to the university to come and sell tools along Uhuru Highway just across Parliament Buildings?” We must have an answer for our youth. We know that this country had started a path for locally manufacturing things. We had companies which were making textiles that were run down. When I was a young person, I was trained at Mumias Sugar Company. What is amazing is that the person who actually interviewed me to join Mumias Sugar Company as a trainee after Form VI was somebody from Nyanza. When he was conducting those interviews, he did not care where I came from because he was just looking for the right person. I wish we could do the same for our youth. That they do not need to know somebody or come from a certain community for them to be engaged, particularly in Government business. We need to create a level playing ground where everybody has an opportunity. I am happy when I hear that we are spending money on education because that is the main equaliser. We must make sure that anybody, who has what it takes irrespective of where he or she comes from, has a chance. A lot has been talked about stalled projects, and I cannot forget, for example, the sugar sector. Although people talk about cane and growing of cane, I know that one of the biggest problems in this sector has been the lack of proper maintenance of those industries. They do not have the capacity to make spare parts for themselves, and getting spare parts from outside the country is a big cost and our production cannot be competitive. The same can be said about how we do other businesses like construction of roads and buildings. We have to make sure that doing business in Kenya is cheap and competitive. We must make sure that we do not bring the corruption element in the business, whether it is in material supply, production or labour. We must make sure that whenever we are doing something, even if it is renovation in this Parliament, it is seen to be competitive and having value for money. I am a very worried person knowing how many kilometres of road we have done in the last seven to 10 years. Those roads are now due for major recarpeting. If we cannot take care of those assets in another three or four years, we will have no roads. As we speak, the road from ABC in Nairobi up to Rironi in Limuru has no bridge for pedestrians to cross. It is a stalled project which was left without creating pedestrian crossings from one side to the other. It is not even complete because it does not have service lanes. We know we are in a problem. How I wish that, as a House, we could find a solution on how to raise more money. People have said we may not need to touch the informal sector, but we must find a way of making sure that everybody contributes to the kitty. If we do not do that, the little amount we are getting from the people in the formal sector will never be enough. This Government has to make a decision on which parastatals or Government companies to retain. I can give an example. The Nyayo Motor Corporation (NMC) is a joint company of Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC), the University of Nairobi and another body. That company was started by KRC, and I was involved in starting it. But we could not launch a Government company to make cars and so, we gave it the name Numerical Machining Complex. Such a company cannot sustain itself. It should be part of the bigger KRC central workshops. If we have to privatise it, we should amalgamate the two units so that it becomes viable for anybody to take over, even from an operational point of view. There is no point in hanging onto some of those institutions which actually depend on the Exchequer for survival. They were meant to stand by themselves. I only pray that this country should be a country that has…"
}