HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 1501887,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1501887/?format=api",
"text_counter": 89,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 170,
"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
"slug": "bonny-khalwale"
},
"content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, having said that, allow me to speak to the agricultural sector in this Address. The President said a number of things, but I will speak to issues of sugar and coffee. For the first time in the history of this country, we have now produced surplus sugar. I am a sugar cane farmer and I can assure you that the reason was only one thing - subsidized fertilizer. I therefore urge the governors of Kwale, Tana River, Kakamega, Busia, Bungoma, Migori, Kisumu and Homa Bay to step it a notch higher by supplementing the ploughing of those farms. If the young President in West Africa could buy tractors, I do not see anything stopping our governors from buying tractors, so that the tilling of our land can be affordable to our farmers. Subsidize that and Kenya will be a net exporter of sugar into the Common Market for Eastern and South Africa (COMESA) and beyond. Believe me, forex will come into this country to the extent that our economy will move a notch higher than where we are today. We are now witnessing a situation whereby, the sugar cartels that used to frustrate our farmers by importing cheap sugar have been locked out. We must stand behind the President for this achievement. It was never achieved by President Kenyatta, never by Moi, Mwai Kibaki or Uhuru, but President William Ruto has achieved it. This is for a fact. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the President is pronouncing himself on the issue of coffee and we need to do slightly more. It is unfortunate that because of the pressure of urbanization, large coffee farmers of Kiambu have put their farms under residential houses. We now must encourage farmers from outside central to do more coffee farming, because coffee is more productive than sugarcane farming. I would like to move on and speak to the issue of health. Colleagues, let us be aware of the advent of social media because it is a very serious agent of misinformation. It is also deliberate. I did not know that they have now become so sophisticated moving from photoshopping of pictures to even photoshop videos. I do not know whether you can call it photoshopping of videos. They are doing so effectively that a noble thing like the Social Health Authority (SHA) with the attendant Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) is being blacklisted on social media, to the extent that now a large percentage of the populace of Kenya thinks SHA and SHIF are wrong things. I want to assure Kenyans as a doctor of medicine, that the way to go, whether some people like it or not, is to move from the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) to SHA and SHIF. Why? Because this is a social programme that was imagined by Charles Njonjo, the former Attorney General. He was a great man. In 1966, Njonjo was disturbed that the only people enjoying insurance in health were white people and Asians. So, he mooted this idea, and here we are today. Whereas Njonjo was responding to a population of eight million people, we want to be stuck in a social programme that was good when the country had a population of eight million people; and are refusing to embrace SHA and SHIF designed to meet a bigger population of 60 million people that we have in Kenya today. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the people misinforming the public are, again, politicians from a certain region. I am also proud of the locals of that region because they have ignored that misinformation such that it is the counties of Mount Kenya led by The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}