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"id": 184712,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/184712/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Mungatana",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Medical Services",
"speaker": {
"id": 185,
"legal_name": "Danson Buya Mungatana",
"slug": "danson-mungatana"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir for giving me an opportunity to also make my contributing to this beautiful piece of legislation that is before us. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, first of all, I want to thank the Minister so much because this is one of the things that will distinguish his stint as the Minister for Co-operative Development. When Ministers go to a Ministry, they must leave a mark and for sure, the Minister 2646 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 9, 2008 will leave a mark in this Ministry by moving and legislating this piece of legislation. On the whole, I have listened very carefully to the debate and to the Mover, the hon. Minister, and I am persuaded as many are here, that we should support this Bill wholly. I have also listened to the seconder of this Bill and I am persuaded that we should support it. However, like we have said before, all good pieces of legislation are capable of being made better. I want to pay tribute to the hon. Members of the relevant Departmental Committee that have already wrote a very good report that I am sure carries all the wishes and the thinking that would go towards improving the Bill. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we need to also make a correction starting from where the seconder left and that is the proposed Clause 32. We need to make a correction there. If I heard correctly, that proposed Clause 32 prohibits SACCOs from participating in businesses such as issuing of third party cheques, opening current accounts, foreign trade operations, investing in enterprise capital, wholesale or retail trade, underwriting or placement of securities or any other activities as the Authority may prescribe that are currently being carried out by banks. In fact, the relevant Departmental Committee of Parliament that looked into this and made its recommendation said that, that section of this Clause 32 should be scraped. I support that position completely because the banks in this country have been totally unfair to the people of this country. The rates of interest that are charged in this country are so high that you cannot believe it. You take a mortgage and you are hit by high interest rates. The banks are afraid of true competition which is coming into the Kenyan market. When these SACCOs start operating just like any other banks with regulations, they are going to make it difficult for these commercial banks to exploit Kenyans the way they have been doing in the past. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am saying that even some of these commercial banks are recording such high profits within Kenya that they are unable to explain and yet they originate from Britain and other foreign countries. They are unable to explain how much money they reap from this country. They are taking advantage of Kenyans in this country. So, I support the total scrapping of the proposed Clause 32. If we have agreed as a Parliament that we are going to make these SACCOs work, then let them work completely like any other commercial entity. The banks are able to lower their interest rates. Obviously the market will determine who will go and borrow money from where or who will register where. So, I wholly support that clause. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are some things that we need to improve in this Bill. I have looked at it and studied it and we can look at the proposed Clause 6(e) which states:- \"Four members, not being public officers, appointed by the Minister by virtue of their knowledge, and possession of a minimum of ten years experience in co- operative practice and management, law, finance or economics:\" The above members form part of the Sacco Society Regulatory Authority. The tradition of both the Ninth and the present Tenth Parliament has been very clear that whenever we are constituting boards, we have done so clearly with the overriding interest of preserving gender parity in all appointments that we have been creating. I am finding it a bit strange that this is not there. So, that is definitely a place where improvement needs to be made. We must mention the question of gender because as a country, we have agreed that we are going to mainstream gender into these things. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the second thing that has been pushed and that we indeed want to make part and parcel of our laws is that even the youth who are part and parcel of the economy in this country need to have clear representation in some of the boards that were are forming in Government. Some of the people that we want to appoint, for example, the Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury, the Commissioner, the Governor of the Central Bank and all these people, by all standards will be people who have invested in property, of wide experience and old October 9, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2647 people. When it comes to regulating the affairs of the people who will be part and parcel of those saccos, the youth must be considered, unless we are saying that the SACCOs should not also have the youth. I define youth as between 18 and 35 years of age and we are saying that it is not possible in many occasions to have experience of ten years as a minimum requirement in this co-operative practice and management, law, finance or economics and yet still you qualify to be a youth. I am saying this requirement is not necessary. I was elected as a Member of Parliament for the first time when I was only 31 years plus a few months and I managed to be an Assistant Minister. If people of that age can actually be Ministers, Assistant Ministers and hold such responsible positions, this requirement is just an oppressive requirement against the youth and it should be done away with altogether. Five years' experience surely in management, law and other specialities should be sufficient and this will be enough to cover even the youth. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, still on the same point, we have now accepted the idea that in constituting national authorities of any kind, the question of regional distribution must be put into effect and I am insisting that this section be redone properly so that when the Minister is appointing the people, there must be a clause that compels him to take consideration of the youth, gender and regional distribution. Why do I say so? I say this because we have now established as a practice that in this Parliament, many people, in fact, come from different areas and if we do not put such checks and balances in the law, what happens is that the Executive goes to abuse that authority. The clear manifestation was when the roads authorities were being established the other day. The Urban Roads Authority and the other authorities were set up. When we were passing this legislation in the Ninth Parliament, we were very clear that there should be authorities. We did not put the checks and balances about regional distribution. What happened? In both authorities, the Coast Province was not represented and I stand in this House to say that, that was a shame on those people who appointed those authorities without due consideration of regional balance. As a result, do you know what happens? When money is being allocated, people are not considered. When things are being done, these regions are not being considered. I think this should not happen. They should not let it happen in this piece of legislation. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I intend to request the Minister to consider introducing a clause that will set up--- One of the things that the Authority we are setting up must do, apart from regulating the SACCOs, is to encourage them. That should be part of their mandate. Why do I say so? There is money that is being charged from the general public who are members of SACCOs, and they are using it for many other reasons. But it is essentially public money. They are also using Government facilities, including our Permanent Secretary and the Minister himself. All those are facilities of the Government that we all pay for, including people from North Eastern, Coast and all other areas which the co-operative society movement has not reached. The Minister has said that he started from Nyanza area, where the co-operative society movement is next to zero. Now, we want this thing to benefit the entire country. So, we are requesting that one of the clauses of the duties is to set up some minimum standards to establish co-operative societies in regions where that movement has not taken root. I see that they have to file a report to Parliament. We should be seeing that they have established a minimum of ten new SACCOs in North Eastern, a few others in Coast, Nyanza, North Rift and all other places where the movement has not taken place. So, if we are saying that this Bill is for the general poor of this country, then let us have things that are deliberately going to force this Authority to move into those areas which are a little disadvantaged and where this society movement has not taken place, so that they can take the necessary steps to make sure that we all come up together. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am very happy with this Bill. I think it is a tremendous piece of legislation. I just wish to echo the clause that deals with the protection of the 2648 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 9, 2008 deposits in the event of a failure. It is a tremendous clause. We are very happy with Clause 57. It is a very beautiful clause because it is the one that will ensure that, at least, people will not lose all their life savings in the event of a failure of any nature. The Deposits Guarantee Fund is a beautiful idea and let us keep it that way. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I beg to support."
}