Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 158002,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/158002/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 114,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "I am not against the sale of the assets of this country. However, could we sell these assets and utilize this money as capital to carry out serious projects that are self- sustaining? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have spoken, for a long time, about the issue of the Lamu Port. It takes very little intelligence for one to realize that if we, for sure, moved ahead and constructed the Lamu Port, built a road and connected it to Ethiopia, which is landlocked at the moment, and has exports worth US$7billion, let us assume that this country could earn only 10 per cent of that, that would be US$700 million. That is sustainable. We would get that money every year and even if we commercialized the port, it would have the capacity to repay. If we constructed that road and connected it to Southern Sudan and Nothern Uganda, we would also be addressing the insecurity problem in that area because of the economic activities. We all know that in Nairobi, there used be a major problem. The Maasais used to fight with the Kikuyus on a daily basis. However, once we have this economic corridor from the Port of Mombasa, all the way to the border of Uganda and the other Eastern African countries like Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, that situation will change. If we truly believe that we have to be equitable in developing this country and if we believe in transformational economy and not just fixing, selling things to construct roads and yet we will not repair those roads tomorrow because we have no money to repair them, we would have taken this project extremely seriously and ensured that we open that corridor. That would give this country much more money than we get today out of the corridor that we have from; Mombasa all the way to Uganda. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wonder why people are quarreling over Migingo. Our President needs to sit with President Museveni and President Kikwete and resolve to put up a canal that will connect Lake Victoria to Lake Tanganyika. We will have to construct a highway that goes all the way to Zambia. We will then tell them that we want to do business with them. How will we communicate? What are the means of transport that we are setting up? This will be a permanent highway that does not require repair because we will be using the waters of Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika and we will change the western region of this country. Kisumu would become a bigger capital than even Nairobi, if you look at the exports that would come from Zambia and from Eastern Congo. The entire region will change. I believe that if this country, and if our leadership was serious about changing the economy of this country, we would not be talking about Kazi KwaVijana . We would be talking about transforming the economy of the Republic of Kenya.Kazi kwa Vijana is Jua Kali thinking. We did not take our children to the universities for them to become trench diggers. That thinking is coming from the Government. It is embarrassing that the Government can be thinking of creating something like Kazi kwaVijana instead of investing that money seriously to create jobs. We are not producing graduates to dig trenches in this country. I think it is high time the Government became more serious. If they are short of ideas, we are full of ideas. We can sit down with them and tell them what we need to do in this country to have enough food and transform the economy of the Republic of Kenya. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that the leadership in this country needs to take things more seriously than they are doing today. I will give you an example. Sometime back, I talked and said that we could not hold an election soon and asked why people"
}