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{
"id": 192693,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/192693/?format=api",
"text_counter": 162,
"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",
"slug": "robinson-githae"
},
"content": " Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, kamuti is that knowledge that cannot be explained in any other language apart from Kikamba. I am saying whatever kamuti KRA is using in collecting taxes, they should continue using it because it is working. Most people expected that the revenue collection would go down, but it has not gone down. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, as I commend the Minister for coming up with what I would call a reasonable Budget, there are some things, however, that are missing in the Budget. For example, I did not see a lot of allocation concerning the rain harvesting programme. Every time we have a rainy season all the water runs down to the Indian Ocean. In other cities and towns, for example, in Israel, it is a requirement that every house must have an underground water tank where you harvest all the rain water and then use it before using to the piped water. So, it is, probably, something that the Minister can think about in his next Budget. We must come up with a programme of harvesting our rain water because it is just going down the drain into the Indian Ocean. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, quite a number of sugar companies are now proposing to produce electricity from the remains of sugar cane harvesting. Again, I see there was no provision for production of electricity from rice stocks and husks. We can also produce electricity from those rice producing areas like Kano Plains and Mwea. I request the Minister to also provide some money for generation of electricity using rice husks and stalks. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, coming to the YEDF and the WEDF, they are noble programmes, but they are not working. The conditions attached to them are not friendly. There is no use of inventing the wheel. Our women have what they call merry-go-round, where they meet and put some money aside and then, at the end of the year, they return the money and loan it again to their members. That is what the Government needs to adopt. The merry-go-round has worked very well. I know of a lot of women and youth who have benefitted from it. All we need to do is to give money to these chamas as they call them and then we leave the rest to them. We should not put any conditions. In my view, that will work. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I have just been in Rwanda and Uganda. We should learn one or two things from them concerning their constituencies. There is a convergence of the Central Government District, the Parliamentary District and the Local Government District. What they have done is that every parliamentary constituency is treated as a district. The central government treats every parliamentary constituency as a district. The Ministry of Local Government treats the constituency area as a local government authority. If you do that, all the clamouring for new districts will come to an end, because constituencies are normally recreated after every ten years, and the process is done in a proper manner because there is establishment. There is a commission that goes round. If we do that, our constituencies will make sense. Some constituencies do not make sense. How can Embakasi, with more than 243,000 registered voters, 1338 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 24, 2008 bring to this House only one Member, and another constituency with only 10,000 registered voters bring one Member to this House? It does not make sense at all. I do not know how that came about, but if we do adopt the system I have described, then it will work. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we also must review our constituency boundaries. That is one of the causes of the political chaos that happened in December. There must be equity. Constituencies must be equal. That is why the system has worked so well in the United States of America (USA). All congressional districts are equal. Then we can have the senate, where irrespective of how big a province is, or whatever the population, it elects one senator. We must do that. We must also review our provincial boundaries, so that they are less tribal. That should be so, so that a region is not associated with a particular political party. At the moment, we must accept that our parties are tribal. Even if the operationalization of the Political Parties Act is put into effect, I do not see much change in that area. What we require is that after the sub-location, there must be another division of Government. In those areas I mentioned, they have what they call"
}