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{
"id": 180334,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/180334/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Khalwale",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 170,
"legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
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"content": "to this world, deserves to be commended. If anything, that person deserves a recognition at the international level for the kind of innovation that he had. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to say something about the issue of boda boda and motorcycles. Mr. Minister, you must try and think about this thing through. What I have found on the ground in Busia, Bungoma, Kakamega and Kisumu - which is the main town- is that now, the boda boda boys have been kicked out of business. Those boda bodas you see on the roads no longer belong to the boys. They belong to \"rich people\" who are now employing our boys. When our boys were riding a bicycle, they could go home with Kshs300 a day. Now, they have to toil the whole day to go and take to the owner of the motor bike an agreed amount. If he fails to reach that target at the end of day, sometimes, the boda boda boy goes home with nothing. I am, therefore, proposing that you think it through and consider this possibility. That we must insist on two things. One, the Government should play affirmative action, go out of the way and support people in acquiring those motorbikes. Having acquired them, the Government should make it illegal for anybody to ride a boda boda motorbike, unless he holds a logbook for that motorbike. That is the only way we are going to fight poverty and unemployment from amongst our youth. Otherwise, you are going to find our youth, once again, attacking the owners of the bodabodas who have employed them. That is because they feel overworked and poorly paid. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the issue of zero-rating duty on cereals is welcome. As I have just said, that touches on the price of foodstuffs. Maybe, the Acting Minister of Finance is not aware that some of the cereals that we are zero-rating are handled through the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) in Mombasa. There is a monopoly at the KPA in handling bulk grains. That monopoly is such that, even if you play that kind of affirmative action, the joker who enjoys that monopoly has a free hand in deciding how much money bread will cost. That is because they are single handlers and the grains overstay in the Port. So, what that monopoly handler does is that he simply passes over the added cost to the consumer and yet, we could contain that by liberalising that particular aspect and making sure that there is no monopoly. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I trust that the acting Minister for Finance, who has demonstrated over the last six years that he fears no powers in this Republic, will not fear some of the powerful Ministers in your Government who are involved in protecting the proprietors of that company that does the monopoly of bulk grain handling. If you need evidence to help you to have a stiffer backbone so as to face those Ministers of yours, allow us to move a Motion of Adjournment one of these afternoons in this House and talk about the on-goings at the KPA in respect of the bulk grain handling. You will be amazed how you we shall be persuaded, that afternoon, not to move that Motion because some of these Ministers are very persuasive wherever they come from!"
}