HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 180110,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/180110/?format=api",
"text_counter": 264,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology",
"speaker": {
"id": 190,
"legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
"slug": "kilemi-mwiria"
},
"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to support this very important Bill. I would like to begin by congratulating members of the Ministry of Information and 3444 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 12, 2008 Communications and the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) for the great work they have done, despite the many challenges. We really must appreciate that there have been major changes since the whole process of democratising the airwaves and other means of communication started. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you realise that in the last five or six years, I think there has been a great deal of expansion with regard to the reach of both the print and the other communication media. We now have several mobile telephone companies in operation. We have several television stations and tens of radio stations. That has been a major step from the days of having only the KBC. That is what we knew. It mainly covered the Government and one politician. It was, basically, a mouth-piece of the State! This is also a major step from the days of Telkom Kenya. There was only one telephone company and the telephone lines were never working. Sometimes, they took ages before an individual could have a telephone line in this country. So, we have made major strides. It is in the protection of that, I believe, that this Bill is also being crafted to see how we can make that even more efficient. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with that expansion, there has to be more efficiency from the point of view of performance that works. It is easier to communicate, even for hon. Members, from the political front and social life and so on, especially with the use of the mobile phones. Also, it is in terms of the competition that has come with the various players, which brings efficiency and monopoly. Monopoly has always guaranteed a situation where only those that have the protection have the possibility of playing a major role in the area of communication development. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with the democratisation and knowledge transfer, it has also been possible for us to widen access to knowledge by many Kenyans. In the area of education, for example, with the Internet, you can access information even more cheaply. You can access books that would not be available in the form of text books; there are many ways in which we can use the Internet, E-mail system and the short message service (SMS) for development through communication. So, that democratisation and expansion has also made it possible for us to reach out to more people, and also to use existing technology to have access to knowledge more cheaply, quickly and efficiently. There has also been an increase in employment creation. With more players, of course, there are more jobs. I think there are thousands of Kenyans working for Safaricom, Zain, Orange and other players. Similarly, private radio and television stations have also increased the numbers of Kenyans who work with them. Again, this is a positive development. We have also seen changes and improvement in the area of local content. For a long time, we were used to foreign content in the form of sports, music, drama, news and general entertainment. However, with more players, there has been pressure and competition to provide the kind of content that many Kenyans would appreciate in the form of local languages, local types of drama, soap operas and so on. So, from that point of view, technology has been used to make it more possible for us to appreciate that which is Kenyan, or that which is African. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think the Bill is long overdue for review, having been published in 1998, many years ago. Circumstances were very different and it is high time, that with the experience of those eight or so years, we did a review on the basis of some of the challenges that the Ministry and the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) have found when implementing the revised Telecommunications Bill. Much has changed in terms of the frequencies that are available and with too much democracy that sometimes is being misused. With too many mobile telephone lines, and people being able to access mobile phones very cheaply, some of which are misused--- There is also unfair competition. In the area of airwaves, we have heard complaints about the already established November 12, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3445 players making it much more difficult for new entrants to make any headway, or even be able to establish themselves. In terms of standards, there are too many players, and it is not quite clear that there is any serious guide on the quality and content of what Kenyans are getting. So, in terms of standardising that and ensuring that there exists reasonable quality, and that we have a minimum that would be acceptable so that people do not just come out and unscrupulous business people try to make money, it is important that we have some kind of regulation that will guide the way forward. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in terms of reacting to the challenges that are coming with the electronic transfers, signatures and a lot that is happening in the airwaves since we no longer have to deal with physical facilities, there is a lot more that is happening that requires the different kinds of challenges with regard to the way we operate. With regard to crimes that have become common, crimes that are visible because they are not physical like SMS--- The SMS was used during the last general election to create a lot of havoc, insults and purveying of messages that were inaccurate. E-mails were used very disastrously during the campaigns, usually telling lies or insulting certain candidates. So, that is, again, something that we have witnessed with this expansion and democratisation that we have to react to. In terms of the hate campaign, I think the SMS, the radio and the television were used during the Referendum and the campaigns of 2007 to send messages of hate; no wonder ethnic clashes tended to be intensified and there were more criminal activities. Messages would be sent to even prepare groups of people to begin to attack others. In other words, with this democratisation also, have come those kinds of challenges that, without control, can lead to greater damage in the way we do business, especially in the area of politics. We also need to be able to protect innocent and unsuspecting public. Many people are at the mercy of this new technology. Many of them do not know how to operate effectively or accurately, but they also have no control over how technology is used to malign them, or to even cheat them in areas of business and other spheres of life. So, in terms of protecting those unsuspecting innocent majority, I think it is important, again, that we have regulations in place that would meet different kinds of challenges. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is important that we also remember that much of the media that was available in terms of the messages, a lot of the content was Western for many years. There was always talk about the media and cultural imperialism, where whatever we saw that was glorified was that which was Western in the form of movies, soap operas, language, ways of dress and so on. It is high time we also called our players to account and reflect much more that is African, so that we can advance the values that we deem important as a society, African and Kenyan. Also in terms of ensuring there is impartiality, if the media is not objective, it can be extremely dangerous. It can be an extremely dangerous weapon for those who want unfair competition. We also need to do something in terms of stemming criminal behaviour that has been referred to, upgrading as opposed to demeaning African values and checking against the intrusion into privacy - the media has been used a great deal to intrude into people's privacy. We also need to check uncontrolled advertisement. I think advertisement has become so aggressive that something needs to be done. Nairobi is full of billboards to the extent that a beautiful City is just becoming one major advertising facility. These kinds of things need to be checked, not only in terms of the physical structures but also in terms of the messages that do not give people a break to even think about how to make informed judgements. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, regulation should not, in any way, be seen to be gagging as opposed to promoting independent thinkers, who are able to speak their minds, or are able to exercise their democratic responsibilities; we are just saying that, as we enjoy that 3446 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 12, 2008 democracy, it needs to be accompanied by responsibly. When you give people too much freedom without any responsibility, it is always bound to become a problem. But as we expand, let us pay greater attention to equity. It is not uncommon to find that there are parts of this country where you cannot communicate with a mobile telephone, and where the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) cannot reach. That also applies to the private media. So, we need to do much more to also reach other parts of Kenya that have not been reached, so that they can also take advantage of the benefits of development that come with increased communication opportunities. This would be the case with telephones, radio and television. In terms of records management, I like the idea that records will be kept at a central point for up to a year, but it would be more important to digitalize this content, so that you will be able to go back to these volumes even 50 or 70 years from now. If you have it recorded in a computer, it will not be a big problem to access that information, or have it compressed in such a way that we do not have to take volumes of space. This is the kind of problem we are seeing with the Ministry of Lands and other Ministries that are still relying on traditional technology to store data. Expansion and regulation can also lead to much more employment. We should expand and liberalise. In the process, we should not reduce the employment opportunities that are made possible by much more widespread expansion of our media. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in terms of how we use communication for the development of local talent, to what extent are we promoting local actors, announcers and musicians or people with traditional knowledge that has not been highlighted and could be made visible through our media? In terms of using radio for development, community radio is an important means of communication in many countries like in West Africa and southern Africa. It is a media that also politicians including hon. Members could use to communicate with their own constituents messages on development. It could be much easier. If an hon. Member has a baraza and you have a community radio in your constituency, you are able to talk to every constituent as long as they are tuned to a radio. If you have a good teacher, they can solve mathematical questions to many secondary schools and so on. There are many ways they can use communication for development if we make it accessible in an inexpensive fashion. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is also gratifying that this Bill is also considering the idea of a social responsibility through the Universal Service Fund that will be used to support projects that will be used to promote electronic technology as a way of the people that have made it through this kind of expansion to give back to communities. The same applies to those that are sometimes the ones who pay the most for the process that they take. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I conclude, I would like to say that as we look at all this, we must also place it in context that we cannot review laws, regulations and talk about democratisation and so on, unless we also go out and create awareness among the consumers of this product of this new development. So, creation of awareness across the country is much more important if we have to have a Bill that will stand the test of time and that will have the support of the general public. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also need to call for more Government investment as well as more private players to come in. To reach out to more Kenyans, we certainly have to spend more by way of resources and Parliament will be called upon to support the necessary Vote that should make this possible. However, we should also do so by reaching out to those that want to invest in the private sector by not only making regulations not much more difficult for them but creating, generally, an environment that will make it much easier to operate and feel wanted as contributing to this revolution. However, it also applies in terms of political maturity. It is up to the politicians also to play a role here. It does not really matter how much we democratise. We will continue to complain November 12, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3447 about hate campaigns if hon. Members and people from opposing political parties see the media just as a way of giving them an upper hand of telling lies or doing whatever they can to give them an advantage. This is often an indication of our lack of political maturity in the way we view things. We could disagree by still being objective and use the resources that are available to promote a good cause and not to divide the country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will conclude by saying that I think democratising Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) is one of the best ways of reducing the gap. It is not only the gap between the more industrialized countries and developing countries like ourselves but also in terms of reducing that digital gap between the disadvantaged rural communities and Kenyans living in slums who cannot afford computers or mobile phones. If we can bridge this gap both at the international, national and social level, I think we will be making a big progress. We will be realising many of the intentions that are promoted by this revised Bill. I beg to second."
}