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"id": 1558957,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1558957/?format=api",
"text_counter": 197,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Bondo, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Gideon Ochanda",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. As we legislate around issues of social protection, I want to believe that as a country, there are issues that we have not been looking at adequately, and we need to consider them. Firstly, in the modern world, after college, every young person starts to seriously think about his or her life upon retirement. On the contrary, in this country, many of us hardly think about our lives after retirement. If you go to the West and other modern countries, young people start looking at how they are going to be in society after they get old and retire. This means that we need to start looking at this issue through different processes. We have to place some element of education in the curriculum towards the end of college so that young people get to know that there is life after retirement, and that life is not in anybody's hands; it is in their hands. Secondly, when we are looking at this Bill, we are dealing with around 5 million people who are in formal work, which includes around 900,000 who work in the public service. It is the 5 million that will be talking about the issue of pension. This means that the rest of the population who are doing their things privately are not being covered anywhere in a formal way. Thirdly, when one is in formal work, pension has had all manner of problems. You get that if you were on a pension scheme, and when you retire, you do not get your pension. The processing of pension takes forever. These are some of the things that really need to be looked at. Another major concern is for the people who are not on pension. How are we looking at their lives as they get older in society? What is the Government doing with the larger population that is not on pension arrangements? As a Government, some level of education and conscientisation needs to be done at a younger stage, where young people start to think about their lives when they are no longer working. That is very critical. We need to look at it as we do our things. As we do what we normally do, the Government and agencies that are there are learning very little. We are constantly struggling with things that are very easy. We hardly learn or do them right. I remember in the last one or two governments, we were struggling with the issue of intelligence. The National Assembly allocated Ksh6 billion for three to four consecutive years for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to identify the indigents in this country, but it did not work. We did not succeed. In those three years, that money was never used. We are now talking about it when UHC is dead. We never learnt from that. Also, we do not learn from what works. We are struggling with the structures of how to let the national Government functions reach the lowest level, yet we have had experiments. The National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) has done it. Despite there being these little scares here and there, the NG-CDF structure has given us a very good learning platform of how the national Government functions can reach the ground level. Constantly, this is never utilised. For example, there is the issue of cash transfers, but the question is, is that the only way we want to look at it? Regardless of this happening, it is good and working. If you individually track and visit the homes of the people whom you are trying to help with the Ksh2,000 stipend, you realise that they do not spend the money on themselves. It is spent by younger people like the grandchildren, who were left under their care. At the end of it all, the Ksh2,000 does not help these elderly people. So, despite it being good, are we able to trace and cross-check what exactly is happening? That is why the issue of older people's homes 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."
}