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{
"id": 1556308,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556308/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Orwoba",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "experts, menstruation champions and gender experts. They will sit down as a committee. Before the money comes, they will plan for a financial year. There will be a conversation about how much is going to be spent on advocacy and sensitization of menstrual hygiene. They will determine how much is going to be spent on actual purchase of menstrual hygiene products. They will also deliberate on the type of menstrual hygiene products because in some areas, there is a good uptake of reusable pads while in some areas, they use disposable pads. I was surprised to find out that in some counties like Kakamega, there is high uptake of menstrual hygiene products. So, depending on the grassroots conversation, they will decide as a committee that is independent from the national committee on what they are going to deal with. After that, they will procure items and go ahead to distribute. That does not end there. That committee will sit at least four times in a year. They will then come back because there will be monitoring and evaluation of the same. When they come back, they will prepare a report showing areas that they distributed and, for example, retention of girls in school or what was happening in the prisons. They will give a report for monitoring and evaluation. That report will be tabled to the national committee, showing exactly how money was spent. All these activities will be happening on a dashboard, where anyone can go and check that, for example, as of today, Bungoma County has received this much and they have spent this much on pads and this much on advocacy and this is how it is going on. There will be checks and balance, accountability and involvement of the grassroots level. There will be buy-ins in terms of products that that are going to be used. It will be not just be the Cabinet Secretary for Gender, Culture, the Arts and Heritage sitting in Nairobi and saying that they have received Kshs1 billion and they will procure through a committee in Nairobi then suddenly 90,000 packets of substandard or poor quality pads appear in Kisi County. That is what we are trying to get away from. Once this Bill is implemented, it will ensure that we start tracking the progress of ending period poverty in Kenya. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as I conclude, I want to thank all the contributors to this Bill. I am very passionate about this Bill. I do not want it to appear that since I am so passionate about it, it must pass. I just want to tell my colleagues, both in the National Assembly and here in the Senate, that we must pass this Bill, not because it is Sen. Orwoba’s Bill and not because it is the Women Representatives who are going to perform certain tasks but because it is the right thing to do. I can see Sen. Sifuna making some comments on the side. As I address you, probably I sound crazy. Like it has been attested, it is the craziness that gets people to stop and think and listen. As you pass by my billboard every day, including the ones that Sen. Thang’wa has talked about, just know that we are all products of missed periods, and that is a fact. We are trying to end the shaming. We are trying to make sure that conversation is normalized. I urge my colleagues to pass this Bill, not because they have daughters, not because they have wives, not because they sit in the Senate, not because they like or hate me, but because it is the right thing to do. In 2025, this is an era where no woman or girl should be trading her body or begging for assistance to buy sanitary pads or any menstrual hygiene products, so that they can go about their business in their workplace, in school, or at home. Mr. Temporary Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order No.66(3), I request that putting of the question be deferred to a later day. Thank you. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and Audio Services, Senate."
}