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{
    "id": 1459674,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1459674/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 296,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Manyatta, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gitonga Mukunji",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "forward. We need to look at the systems that are already in place and empower them. We need to ensure that we do not reinvent the wheel. However, whatever works in this country should be empowered. It is an issue that touches on the youths. We have a big population of jobless youths, and we need to empower them. I welcome the money allocated to employ JSS teachers and intern doctors to move them from interns to permanent and pensionable basis and the increment in allocation of money to TVETs. That is where our young peoples are. In the same breath, we need to see how we can enhance the lenders who give cheap credit to our young people who want to practise self- employment. It is high time the National Treasury looks at how to allocate more money to Uwezo Fund and the Youth Enterprise Development Fund as those are systems that are already in place. I am a witness of how we have empowered young people in Manyatta Constituency with only Ksh6 million. I have groups that have since developed. Some have opened small hotels and are already making money. Others are doing farming and poultry keeping, and I can see their results on how they have spent their money. I call upon Parliament to look into those things and see how we can do it better. I also want to see what we can do in terms of maintenance of our roads. We have a crisis in terms of the low volume roads that have been done around the country. It is a high time we changed the contract specifications for maintenance of our roads. We need to stop giving people contracts of one year to finish a road and go. We need to have contracts that run for five to ten years. We need durable roads that do not form potholes and lead us into a crisis after a year of its construction. There is an outcry on the statuses of our roads that were previously done in the last five years. In my constituency, there are many roads that require re-carpeting. This is something that would have been easily handled if the contractor had been given a five to ten-year contract to ensure that the said roads are in good shape. While we have allocated money to the counties, I support what the Members have proposed. There is no way we can have county governments using less than 10 per cent of their money on development and the rest of the money going to recurrent expenditure. It tells you there is wastage in the system. We need to re-look at how we can put in place laws that are going to ensure that most of the money that goes to our counties through devolution is used for development. That is how the NG-CDF money has worked. You cannot go to a constituency and find programmes of the NG-CDF stalling as it is clear in law. It has systems that enable the Fund to work. We need to empower the Fund more, as it has systems that have proven to work and has results that can be verified by the people on our roads. The issue of education is also key in this Supplementary Appropriation Bill. We have free primary education, but we have not matched the dream of Hon. Mwai Kibaki with infrastructure development. We have compounded the problem by introducing the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) programme. We need to do a lot on that. There is need to ensure that we have systems that work so that we can have an educated population that is able to move this country forward. Let us put more resources or have a system that works. There is also need to give and ensure that information is shared well on the new funding model in our universities. Parents do not understand it. There is need for the Government to do more on information sharing so that parents can understand."
}