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{
    "id": 1464069,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1464069/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 404,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Baringo County, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Jematiah Sergon",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I am sorry about that. I think the microphone went off. Firstly, I want to declare that I am a member of this Committee. We are living in very unprecedented times as a country. This Bill is coming at a time when we want to look at every coin and see its value. Even as we discuss this allocation, I also want to speak to the issues that are stipulated in this Bill. I want to talk about the Community Health Promoters (CHPs). This is one of the noble ideas that the Government of Kenya Kwanza is implementing. It is through CHPs that the community is going to be taken care of specifically on matters health. Initially, people would feel very sick to the extent that when they arrived at the hospital they just got admitted. There was no diagnosis and interaction with community health workers before they arrived at the hospital. The CHPs play a very crucial role. It is one of the very noble agenda that this Government has put across for Kenyans. As we do this across all the 47 counties, you can see the allocation of the money that is there. The stipend of Ksh5, 000 is very minimal. I also want to agree with Members who spoke before me that this money should be increased in future. I believe it is just the beginning. The number of the CHPs in counties vary based on the size of the population. The ratio is between the population of the county vis-à-vis the number of the CHPs, which is a very good idea. However, money is very scarce. Considering the challenges that we have gone through, I also realised that there are 18 counties that have been earmarked for the establishment of the industrial parks. If you ask me, it is an idea that has been overtaken by events. You might wonder what 50 million Kenyans do every day. After churning out many graduates from school with all the skills, are these the areas that we should be exposing them? Specifically, we need to think whether skill-based students or our young people who have just finished schools or people who have interacted with Technical and Vocational Educational Training (TVET) are appropriately placed. These industrial parks will give us the opportunity to employ most of our youth and most of the skilled members of the society. For instance, in this paper, we do not have Baringo where I come from, yet we had ear-marked areas for livestock production in Baringo, specifically on hide and skin, meat production and creating abattoirs. We also have areas of horticulture. This idea should be generated right from the bottom and the people own the process so that we implement these industrial parks. Otherwise, if we do not take care of this, it might end up being one of the biggest challenges in terms of white elephants. We are building these industrial parks…I saw one Principal Secretary for Investments, Trade and Industry, Mr Abubakar, in Busia last week. He was commissioning a very nice industrial park in Busia County with His Excellency Mr Otuoma. I want to believe that the people of Busia have been given the opportunity to interact with the aggregation of this park. Otherwise, if we continue just launching and identifying these parks without taking in and understand that this should be a project that is supposed to be culminating right from the grassroots, then we might end up not achieving what we intended. Another thing is that in both areas we are assessing whether the county government can deliver this or it be domiciled fully in the national level. This is because, we want the monies allocated to these projects to have value. For the first time, we want to have functional factories in Kenya. To have projects that are completed so that we do not just start these projects and these industrial parks then leave them hanging all over the place, while Kenyans have already lost money. On the issues of the Community Health Promoters. I think we made a very big mistake when we created devolved governments through the Constitution of 2010; more so by allowing 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."
}