HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 1591571,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1591571/?format=api",
"text_counter": 328,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": null,
"content": "representations and nobody speaks for the needy. I am just laying the basis before I move this Bill. I challenge you, colleague Senators, that you must take your legislative responsibility more seriously and ensure that you speak for the people that sent you here. Sen. Eddy, my good friend, you were not sent here by very well-to-do people. I know the people of Migori. They are just as much like the people of Kericho that I represent. Their standing on the wealth radar of the country is almost average. There are many things that we do as a country, I will come to the social intervention programmes, what we send to persons with a disability and to the social support programme of those citizens that are 70-year plus. If you go to your county, Sen. Ogola and ask in a public gathering in Homa Bay where you come from, you will find that there is a 70-year-old who is in the safety net and they are being supported, then you will find another one who is not with no clearly defined process upon which this exercise is done. There is a lack of specific focus on this special category of Kenyans. There is even a very live conversation, this is a wrong time to have it, but we need to have this conversation as a country. This issue of zero rating of bread and milk, how many of your constituents, Sen. Eddy, buy milk and bread from shops and supermarkets? About 99 per cent, if not 100 per cent, of the people that you represent in this Parliament wake up to take milk with ngwaci, nduma or even without any ‘accompaniment’ if that is what your people call it. Despite this, many times when you have a conversation about the cost of bread, it is made to appear as if it is a national problem, yet the Kenyans that actually consume bread on their breakfast do not form the larger population. About 99 per cent of the people that many of us, that come from the rural counties, represent in this House, that is not part and parcel of their basic requirements, yet you are told that it needs to be zero-rated because it is food of the poor. Therefore, my constituents, who are very poor, do their share in paying the tax burden to the country, but then that same tax that has been deducted from them is used to shoulder the burden of those who enjoy bread and milk. If you are to move it to Nairobi, for example, and other cities like Mombasa, Nakuru, Eldoret and the bigger cities, what Kenya has not been able to successfully do is to stratify the locations and the areas through which those that need to benefit from social intervention from the Government and support live and are able to access these services. Why should I, who lives in a fairly affluent neighborhood, want to buy--- If you read why, for example, bread and milk is subsidized, at the same price with people who come from our informal settlements--- If it is a subsidy of some sort to help the urban poor, that should not be a problem because we must be a society that appreciates that people are not at the same place in terms of their spending abilities. Is it not possible to classify so that those who benefit from these social interventions are targeted and, therefore, we do not burden the entire country benefiting people who do not necessarily need it. Take the example of the issue that we had a few weeks ago; examination fees. There was a big headline saying President William Ruto has stopped payment of exam fees for students. I dug deeper to try and understand what exactly the conversation is. The unfortunate thing with our newspapers, the editors and people that speak in the media, is that we see every Government policy decision through the prism of politics. It is so The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}