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"id": 183110,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/183110/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Githae",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Local Government",
"speaker": {
"id": 159,
"legal_name": "Robinson Njeru Githae",
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"content": " Thank you Mr. Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to make my contribution to this very important Ministry's Vote. May I take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister and his staff for the good work that they are doing. As we congratulate the Minister, it is my request that the Ministry should start thinking outside the box. They must be innovative and come up with new solutions to new problems. We cannot sort out old problems unless we use new solutions. Mr. Speaker, Sir, one of the things we can do is to make all constituencies to be districts. As of now, there is this confusion where in some Ministries, the principal organ is the district while October 22, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2937 it is the constituency in others. I think if we make all constituencies districts, we would be able to sort out this issue. This is not something new. Our neighbouring countries-Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania, are doing this. In fact, they have gone further and said that every constituency is a district and a local authority. In neighbouring countries, a Member of Parliament is an ex-officio councillor of the local authority. I think that is the way to go, so that we remove this confusion. We need change of policy and I think it is good if it is effected. Mr. Speaker, Sir, let me now dwell on census. A census is planned for the near future. The Ministry should start preparing so that when results are announced, they would be acceptable to the majority of Kenyans. The census should be credible. They should stop asking questions which have been overtaken by events. Of what importance is the tribe of a person in the census? Do we still need these kind of questions? To me, they are irrelevant. All people in this country are Kenyans. We do not need to emphasize tribes. We should even go further and take the example of Rwanda where if you call somebody a Hutu or a Tutsi, it is an offence and you would be jailed. That way, we will be able to eradicate tribalism. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as I said, the Ministry needs to start thinking outside the box. If I come to registrations, in this country we have very many registrations, each with a different number. For example, we have numbers for Pay As You Earn (PAYE), Value Added Tax (VAT), Income Tax, Personal Identification Number (PIN), Identity Card, Voters Card, Birth Certificate, Driving Licence, National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) and Death Certificate. We need to copy Botswana. In Botswana, the number you are given when born in a hospital will be your Identify Card number, Income Tax number, PIN number, PAYE number and even bank account number. That way, they have been able to centralise all their registrations. In this country, there are so many registrations which only increase the cost of doing business. Mr. Speaker, Sir, if you go to the United States of America (USA) or United Kingdom (UK), as you enter a town, you will find a notice board welcoming you to the town. They state the population of that town on that board. In this country, nobody really knows the population of our small towns. In these countries, once a birth is registered, the register of the town is updated automatically by computers. When death is registered, automatically, the population register is updated. This means that at any given day or hour, they know what exactly their population is. We are, therefore, asking the Ministry to start thinking outside the box and copy what other people are doing. This will enable proper planning in this country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, let me now come to the CDF, particularly the so-called poverty index. I am recommending that we abolish the so-called poverty index. I was shocked to find some Members of Parliament glorifying poverty and saying their constituencies should be poorer. We want to create wealth but if we start talking of poverty index so as to get more CDF allocation, we are glorifying poverty instead of glorifying wealth creation. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we should abolish the so-called poverty index which, to date, we have not even been given the figures. We, therefore, cannot allocate funds for the year 2008/2009. Let us have CDF allocation based on population or let it be allocated equally to all constituencies so that the issue of glorifying poverty does not arise. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I am proud that when I was first elected as the Member of Parliament for Ndia, we were number 43 in the so-called poverty index. Now, we are number 13. In Ndia we are not glorifying poverty. We want to be number one on the so-called poverty index. That is our target! We are interested more in wealth creation rather than eradication of poverty. So, what we are saying is that the Ministry should plan outside the box."
}