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"id": 181364,
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"speaker_name": "Dr. Otichilo",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this chance to make my comments on this Bill. First, I would like to congratulate the Minister for bringing this Bill to the House. It has been long overdue. I would like to urge my colleagues in this House to support this Bill, because it is going to make a lot of difference in this country. It is going to encourage a lot of innovation in various sectors of our economy. This Bill is extremely important, particularly in the music sector. We have had many of our good musicians, who have come up with various good music pieces, which have been copyrighted. Immediately the music is produced, it is pirated in River Road and everywhere. Most of us who visit most social places will agree with me that we find counterfeited, or pirated, music being sold everywhere. The owners or producers of the music get nothing. I happen to come from a constituency, Emuhaya, where we have many musicians. We have had many musicians from this constituency, but I can assure you that most of them are extremely poor, yet their music is played on radio and TV all over everyday. Take a musician like Daudi Kabaka. His music is played everywhere, but the guy died a very poor person. I can also enumerate many musicians in Emuhaya who are paupers and some died. They could not even have money for burial! So, I think this Bill is going to bring sanity, particularly to the music industry. As my colleague said earlier, we have a lot of innovation in science and technology that is coming up. Most of young people are involved in a lot of innovation and it needs to be protected. I believe that this Bill, once enacted into law, is going to protect various innovations, particularly in the area of design. We have people who come up with very nice designs, but immediately they come to the market, they are just pirated and the designers end up with nothing, yet people who did not do anything end up reaping where they did not sow. Equally in the manufacturing sector, there are a lot of counterfeit goods that are coming into the country. This is, indeed, a bad thing because the manufacturers, who spend a lot of money on research and development and come up with very high quality products, end up losing their money, because of these counterfeit goods. So, I want to commend the Ministry for coming up with this Bill. As my colleagues noted earlier, there is a need to look at the definition of \"counterfeit\" because what is in this Bill is not the international version of it. I would like to appeal to the Ministry to look at the definition, and, if possible, let us adopt the international definition, which is well accepted even by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the issue of generic medicines has also been raised by the earlier contributors and I also want to add my voice to this. Generic medicine is legitimate medicine. It is medicine that is of high quality. It is medicine that meets the set standards, except that it is not medicine that is produced by the originator. Therefore, this Bill should be very clear on this issue because generic medicine is very important to this country because it is relatively cheaper than the original medicine and most Kenyans depend mainly on it since it has the same efficacy as the original one. Therefore, we should make sure that this Bill does not include generic medicine to be considered as being counterfeit. So, I would like to appeal to the Ministry to look at the issue of generic medicine and make sure that we cover it so that our people are covered and can continue accessing it, since it is fairly cheaper than the so-called original medicine. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also want to add my voice on the issue of the October 30, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3197 members of the board under Section 6 of this Bill. I think we have too many people on this board and as most of my colleagues have said, such a big board may not be very effective. So, I think the Minister should look at this and see to it that he looks at the membership afresh and comes up with a much leaner but more representative board. When I was going through the list, I found that there was no representation from the Pharmacy and Poisons Board and I think this is a very important board which should be represented on this particular board. Therefore, I would like to propose that at least, the Pharmacy and Poisons Board be represented on this Board because it is very important. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also wish to turn my attention to Section 34 of this Bill. Going through this Section, I get a feeling that a lot of powers have been given to the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to do most of the control and so on. I think this needs to be limited. I believe KRA has a big role to play in this Section but I equally believe that Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) would even have a major role to play because it is actually the technical organisation in this country that ensures that the quality of goods manufactured or imported in this country meets the international standards. Therefore, I believe under this Section, the KEBS should be given quite a lot of powers to ensure that all the goods entering or manufactured in this country meet the set standards by the International Standards Organisations (ISO) as we know it. I also believe that apart from the KEBS, also the Pharmacy and Poisons Board should also be given a lot of powers to be able to ensure that this Bill is enforced. They should be part and parcel of this enforcement team. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, lastly, I have not had time to look at the Intellectual Property Rights Act and I believe the Minister should look at it and ensure that there is some form of harmony with this Bill because we do not want to end up again with some conflict between the Intellectual Property Rights Act and this Act because they are quite inter-related and, therefore, we need to ensure that they are not conflicting or contradicting. Finally, I wish also to call upon the Ministry to create awareness. After this Act goes through this Parliament and becomes law, there is need for the Ministry to initiate awareness programmes about this law because it is a very important law. Unless the Ministry comes up with a pro-active awareness programme, Kenyans will not know about this law and it will just be like many other laws we have been enacted in this House which have been forgotten and people do not know that they exist. So, with those remarks, I wish to support this Bill."
}