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"speaker_name": "Mr. Bett",
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"legal_name": "Franklin Kipng'etich Bett",
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"content": "Thank you Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me an opportunity to address my mind to this all-important Bill. This Bill has been pending since the year 2003. That is when it first came to the Committee on Land, Agriculture and Natural Resources, which I chaired then and also this time round. I want to thank the Minister, Mr. J. Nyagah, for fast-tracking and seeing that this Bill comes to the House, is debated and enacted thereafter. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the reason why this Bill was held for that long, was because of interests of various individuals in the country. The other reason was that SACCO members were not agreeing on some formulations or provisions in the Bill. I now believe, after listening to the stakeholders when we asked them to come before the Committee, that they agreed widely on the issues which were of disagreement before. What then is in a SACCO? What are the merits of these institutions? In its raw form, merry-go-rounds, normally practised by our mamas in the villages, are some kind of SACCO. I remember in my home, the first house built of corrugated iron sheets was out of a merry-go-round arrangement between my mother and her fellow women. There is value in this. It gave us a house which was not there before. This was a house which was properly roofed and we were not rained on again. Therefore, there is benefit in it. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue is that of poverty alleviation. Imagine my Kshs2 combined with another Kshs2 from another member. Sooner or later, it becomes Kshs10,000. Kshs10,000 enough to buy a cow. This cow will give me milk which I will sell and get money for my up-keep at home. That is alleviation of poverty at the household level. SACCOs can easily do that. That is why I support that this Bill be passed, so that the management of SACCOs is properly rationalized, controlled and regulated, so that nobody plays games with our people. It also creates employment in the sense that if it is a SACCO managing agricultural produce, it is going to encourage the farmers to do more on their land, because there is a society that is going to handle that produce for easy marketing. So, in the process, many people will be employed in the farms, be it on the crop or livestock side. There is also the agri-business, which will be a consequence of good farming practices. That again will create employment for our youth. The youth in this country require employment. SACCOs can be a source of employment, apart from being a tool for the creation of wealth by way of encouraging savings, which is a good culture for any developing country. Savings can be used in future for whatever purpose that a community or family will have. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, SACCOs which we are saying are very arrangement, must be managed. That is the meaning of this Bill. They must be properly managed. This country is already full of collapsed SACCOs. We do not have to have more SACCOs collapsing, because they go down with people's money and reduce employment amongst our people. It again discourages people, but if we manage them well, they will, as a colleague said, be like in the United States of America (USA), where SACCOs have existed for many years, because they are properly managed. A law that is to be introduced must look at that critically. I want to say that my Committee has looked at this Bill and we are convinced that it is a good Bill; with the contribution of hon. Members, it can even be made better, stronger and a law that will stand the test of time. It will even prevent such things like pyramid schemes, which do 2654 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 9, 2008 come when there is a vacuum in a system of financial management. If we have a very strong SACCO movement in place, people will not see sense or reason to go into pyramid schemes, which we are aware have milked people, caused frustrations and havoc to our people in the countryside. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in my constituency one pyramid scheme came and people joined it. These pyramid schemes come throug h the church, because their operators know that it is easy for people to believe them. When they came they were like church organizations, and at the end of the day they took from my people of Bureti in excess of Kshs100 million and then collapsed. We can easily avoid such things if we strengthen and broaden regulations for these institutions. If we do not have regulations which are strong to manage them, we will go the same way as the SACCO in my constituency went. That is the Bureti Tea SACCO. They did not follow the rules. We have tried as much as possible to devise punitive measures that will prevent any person from within or outside the institution from interfering with the management of the SACCO. Today, Bureti Tea SACCO is on its knees, because of the non-existence of legislation for controlling or managing the SACCO and thus assist those farmers. We also do not require complex rules and regulations. I know a colleague of mine said that some Schedule should be deleted. The more complex a situation is, the more it becomes an avenue for fraudsters, and provides a chance to people who think they are wiser than others to use and defraud the unsuspecting society members. Let us make the rules to be as simple and protective as possible. The moment we make them complicated, the society members will be robbed of their savings. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to confirm that my Departmental Committee on Agriculture, Land and Natural Resources, which has an oversight role over the Ministry of Co- operative Development and Marketing, has looked at this Bill. We are only waiting for what hon. Members will say. We are ready to make our recommendations for the enactment of this Bill. With those few remarks, I support the Bill."
}