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{
    "id": 1477278,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1477278/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 348,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Githunguri, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gathoni Wamuchomba",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "moving from the old age to new age. What will happen tomorrow if we all run to occupy the affordable houses and markets? What will happen if we experience another breakout of COVID-19 that would require rescue centres? Where will we go? What will you use? I am not fighting; I am not here to say that affordable houses are not good but of course, we cannot just grab every other land and take all other available spaces and build markets forgetting that we are also moving technologically. All the land that was marked in the old Constitution for ADCs should not be transformed. We should instead think of the kind of technology we should adopt so that we can help farmers marry a new technology instead of transforming the Agricultural Development Corporations to markets and affordable houses. I rise to support this Bill. I advocate that every sub-county should have some space left for a technopolis. We should use technology, through a technopolis, to help our farmers. I just came from a place called Riuki in my constituency where I met with about 1,000 coffee farmers. To my shock, the coffee factory that used to help us to process, pulp and market our coffee is officially dead. A thousand farmers were crying to me, their Member of Parliament, to assist them revive that coffee factory. I asked the group: “Who is here, and can he help us to revive this coffee factory”? They nominated three young Gen Z who have Bachelor’s Degrees in Economics, Commerce and in Agro Economics, and are in the village idle. We are crying that we have no money in our pockets, and that there are no factories to pulp and process our coffee yet our children, with their degrees, are in the villages. Do you not think we need to think critically? Something is not right with us. How do we educate people to acquire degrees and then collapse the factories where we are supposed to employ them? I engaged the farmers in a meeting and we agreed that if we cannot get the money from the Government, we are going to fundraise and make sure that we revive that coffee factory. But, that is not where I am. I wish one of these technopolis centres would be taken to Riuki Village, where there are too many learned young people who are ready, qualified and ably equipped by the Government of Kenya to work in such centres. I appreciate and welcome the ideology that we can decentralise a technopolis from Konza to my village in Githunguri. I cannot wait for us to start using technology to cure the existing economic problems we have. About two months ago, I travelled to rural Italy. I realised that the generations of the early 40s and 60s built their houses with underground bunkers. They designed them in readiness for war. Those bunkers helped them so much, and keep helping them even now during winter. During winter, they store their wheat in the bunkers to secure their food. Unfortunately, a majority of the young population in Italy has moved from the villages to the towns. The native Italy villages have been abandoned, but there are still bunkers being used to store food, even for the export markets. People who designed those houses were ready for a century. They were planning for a century existence. The Technopolis Bill is about Kenya planning for a century to come. We must accommodate a technopolis in every village, if we can. I support. Thank you very much."
}