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{
    "id": 158005,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/158005/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 117,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. ole Metito",
    "speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Regional Development Authorities",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 199,
        "legal_name": "Judah Katoo Ole-Metito",
        "slug": "judah-ole-metito"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir for giving me this opportunity to also contribute in support of this Motion on the Presidential Address. Let me first start by what the President described as a national crisis; the issue of food insecurity. We continue to experience this problem because of what I will call inequitable policies in the Ministries that are concerned with food production in this country. First, I would like to start with the Ministry of Agriculture. We have several areas in this country that produce food and they have different weather patterns. I am referring to the North Rift, the South Rift and the other areas. I would like to see the Ministry of Agriculture coming up with policies and programmes that suit these areas during different times. If you look at the way the Ministry of Agriculture plans its activities, you will see that they plan them in a uniform way. When they plan for harvesting, they plan for the whole country. When they have plans for planting, they plan for the whole country. However, we have different climatic patterns in this country. For instance, when it is planting season in the North Rift, it is harvesting season in the South Rift. The Ministry of Agriculture should take this into account. So, the issue of supplying fertilizer and seeds should be done differently. When the North Rift is harvesting, the South Rift region is planting. So, when farmers are planting in the North Rift, it is harvesting season in the South Rift, especially in Loitokitok. Such a programme should be made to suit all areas that produce food. Still on the issue of food insecurity, a lot has been said about irrigation. I want to say that if we could put all our resources in the right places, the issue of food insecurity would be a thing of the past. This goes with what my colleagues, who spoke before me, termed as some dams that are being proposed for construction to be used for irrigation. A lot of resources should be put in the Ministry of Regional Development Authorities because these dams are supposed to be under this Ministry. If you take, for instance, the dam in Marsabit and the one in the Ewaso Nyiro Basin, these dams are supposed to be done by the Ewaso Nyiro North Development Authority and the Ewaso Nyiro South Development Authority. There is also Wei Wei in Sigor. They fall under the Kerio Valley Development Authority and Kimira-Oluch in Rachuonyo and Homa Bay, which fall under the Lake Basin Development Authority. These authorities were created by this House to ensure that there is equitable distribution of resources in those areas. They became white elephant institutions due to lack of resources. If resources could be put into the right place, a lot could be achieved in terms of food security. I would like to talk about some of the policies that His Excellency the President said will be introduced in this House during this Session. One of them is the policy on arid lands. Eighty per cent of our land mass is arid. If we could invest a lot of money in"
}