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{
    "id": 1523017,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1523017/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 461,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Marakwet West, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Timothy Kipchumba",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you for giving me an opportunity to contribute on this very important Bill, the Gold Processing Bill. From the onset, I thank Hon. Bernard Shinali for this very important piece of legislation. My understanding of this legislation is that we are either addressing issues or conflicts will arise out of such legislation. We have the Gold Mining Act of 2016. If you read Clause 4(2) of this legislation, it says that this Act shall prevail in cases of any inconsistency between this Act and any other legislation. The Mining Act of 2016 is the parent mining Act in this country. Look at royalties between the national Government and county governments. The Mining Act of 2016 clearly provides what county governments shall get out of mining activities in a certain county. There are royalties out of a mining in a certain area and county. If the Bill passes to be an Act of Parliament and we say that the Bill shall prevail in cases of an inconsistency with the Mining Act, it defeats the very intention of us passing the Mining Act of 2016 as a House. Those are the issues we shall look at and address when it comes to the Committee of the whole House. Be it as it may, I believe this country is sleeping on its major resources. We need to do much to identify the minerals we have in this country. I believe we can get certain minerals in this country if we are serious to invest in determining where to find them. A county like Turkana and a constituency like Tiaty can sustain themselves if we are serious to invest in the minerals we have. We, as a country, must invest in that area. There are many gold deposits in this country. I usually see men and women collecting gold deposits with their bare hands and some small basins along River Arol in Marakwet West Constituency where I come from. They wash the minerals and sell. I always ask myself what would happen if these people using their bare hands and local techniques to process gold in their primitive or traditional means had gold commercialised. I am very sure we would get deposits that would even fund the economy of this country to some extent. I support the Bill to the extent that it comes to this House in good faith and is not to make Kenya a corridor or transit country for some people to smuggle gold from other parts of Africa. We have been told that there is gold in Kenya. There are people who export gold to other countries. Currently, Kenya is not a gold-mining country but there is a lot of gold that passes through this country. So, I hope that once this Bill is passed in this House, it shall not be used by corrupt elements to smuggle gold from other neighbouring countries and process it as if it is from certain areas of this country, then export it to other countries. I hope that the Bill is not being introduced so that that activity is executed by some few elements. Clause 35 provides that the term of a processing licence shall be for a period not less than 25 years. In my opinion, that should be reviewed. It is not fair that a company is granted a licence for a period not less than 25 years. Further, Clause 35 does not give circumstances under which that licence can be revoked. It should have some limits so that if you give us a blanket of 25 years, then we shall give conditions under which that licence can be revoked. This is because it can be subject to abuse. Be that as it may, to sanitise our mining industry, it is also good to break down the Mining Act (Cap. 306) so that we have sector-specific legislation. Sometime back, there were many reported cases of theft of transformers in this country. I asked Kenya Power the reason behind the rampant theft of transformers in this country. To my shock, I was informed that those who steal transformers extract copper from them. Kenya is not a copper exporting country and we do not process copper in this country for export. Under which circumstances is this copper extracted and exported to other countries? Therefore, if we had a copper processing law in this country, we could address such issues. If we have a Bill that provides for the entire 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."
}