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{
"id": 1493635,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1493635/?format=api",
"text_counter": 72,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Kikuyu, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
"speaker": null,
"content": "tell us that: “ Hatutaki wanyeshe”, while it was them that we sought to protect. It is our young mothers, daughters, our sisters we sought to protect from cheap, finished products of sanitary towels, which nobody can authenticate how hygienic they are in terms of the standards that they have been manufactured under in the West and the Far East. Some of those Far East countries have no standards. You get what you pay for. That is what we sought to levy excise duty on so that we protect that local manufacturer who is manufacturing sanitary towels in Mlolongo, Ruiru, Juja or Nakuru. It is the farmer in Western Kenya and parts of Nyanza, that we sought to protect, who have now been given BT cotton seed to produce cotton for the value addition of those manufacturing industries. It is the Kenyan youth who are on the streets we sought to protect to create jobs for them in those factories, but what did we do? We were told to reject. We rejected it, and we lost jobs. We exported jobs to the Far East. No wonder when the Cabinet Secretary for Labour and Social Protection, Dr Alfred Mutua, announced 3,000 jobs in Qatar, 30,000 Kenyans turned up at Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC). I want to plead with Kenyans and, more so, our fourth estate to be responsible in how we communicate with our people. We end up misleading our people. At times, even political leaders are guilty of this. We end up saying what we think is popular with the public, but not what is right. I have said this before that what is right is not necessarily what is popular. With regard to public participation, I want to ask all our committees that when we embark on public participation, our work is to listen to the views of the public, balance them against the legislative proposals that we have and the policies that we seek to anchor that legislation on. It is upon a Member of Parliament, upon being elected, for example, the Member for Kajiado South, the people of Kajiado South believe that he is the best among their people and they entrusted him to come and legislate on their behalf. Therefore, they expect the Member for Kajiado South or the Member for Kikuyu to know better. By knowing better, they should know a certain legislative proposal that is before the House is anchored on the policy of import substitution. Therefore, you must balance the question of import substitution and the policy of import substitution against the legislative or the tax proposals that are being made, vis-a-vis the interests of business people who are importing cheap products that endanger our women and young girls. It is only these honourable men and women in this House who can do that. In conclusion, let me inform the Leader of the Minority Party that the Office of the Attorney-General is in the wee hours of finalising the Public Participation Bill. A substantive Bill that is now even further informed by what the Supreme Court has said will guide our public participation exercise moving forward, so that we do not find many of the statutes that we enact into law in both Houses being rendered unconstitutional based on public participation. With those few remarks, let me conclude by commending the honourable ladies and gentlemen in the Supreme Court who rendered that judgement that was very well informed. We can now comfortably say that the Supreme Court has men and women who weighed in on the issues that will guide our country very well moving into the future. Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker."
}