Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1505654,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1505654/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 270,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wambua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13199,
        "legal_name": "Enoch Kiio Wambua",
        "slug": "enoch-kiio-wambua"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. I take this opportunity to second the Bill and the Cotton Industry Development Bill report. I must begin by thanking the promoter of the Bill, Sen. Beth Syengo, and the Committee of the Senate on Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries for making bold steps to process the Bill to this point. I also want to thank our partner Committee in the National Assembly for proposing certain amendments that, as you have heard our Chair say, I sit in the Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Senate. The Committee has gone through the provisions of the amendments proposed by the National Assembly. We have agreed with them. Cotton in this country, at some point, used to be a major source of foreign exchange. Many Kenyan farmers earned a lot of money from this crop. Besides the money they earned as foreign exchange, this country also benefited from the cotton industry because apart from the farmers that were growing the crop, we used to have a lot of ginneries that were processing the cotton into yarn. We also used to have vibrant textile companies like Rivatex and Kisumu Cotton Mills (KICOMI). When we were growing up, we used to have cotton fields in Kitui, and the story of second-hand clothes, popularly known as mitumba, was not popular when we were growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This is because cotton growing was very vibrant and people would easily buy newly manufactured clothes in the country because the raw material for that would be cotton. The failure by successive governments to properly regulate the industry led to the collapse of commercial cotton farming as we used to know it. I know and appreciate that there are still regions that are supported to grow cotton and they are sustaining quite a number of ginneries and garment processing factories. 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."
}