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"id": 192944,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/192944/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Mrs. Mugo",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Public Health and Sanitation",
"speaker": {
"id": 85,
"legal_name": "Beth Wambui Mugo",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to also contribute to the Motion on the Floor and to hastily congratulate the Minister for Finance and his very able team for producing yet another laudable Budget. It is not only laudable, but it is a very focused Budget aimed at uplifting the lives of the majority poor in this country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, it is specially commendable when it comes at such a time when our country has gone through a very difficult time since the beginning of this year, when many properties and livelihoods were destroyed. But we have been able to pick up the pieces and put together such a Budget. That goes a long way to show that, as Kenyans, we belong together. We must hold together and work very hard together. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we want to laud the leadership of our three leaders - the President, Vice- President and Minister for Home Affairs and the Prime Minister, for pointing the direction for this country. We also laud your leadership, Mr. Speaker, Sir, because by bringing stability to this Parliament, it has also contributed to taking a big step and putting together such a Budget which, a lot of it will depend on how the leadership and us, as leaders in this House behave, our utterances and what leadership we display to those that we represent. Mr. Speaker, Sir, let me specially commend the Minister for widening the base for tax collection without necessarily adding an extra burden to the already highly-taxed Kenyans. If we all co-operate and the Minister is able to collect all the taxes the way he has planned, we have no fear that we will be able to realize our goals. The idea of putting a framework to SACCOs and bringing a Bill to this House is good. I would encourage that very much and ask the Minister to widen that base to cover the many groups. I have in mind, for example, the many organized women groups all over the country which are engaged in a lot of wealth creation and earning of livelihoods for their families. We need to encourage our youths to borrow a leaf from those groups. There are many youths who are unemployed. We want our youths, whom we often see at every corner of the road or market places, to form economic groups so that they can be provided with a legal framework to borrow money from Savings and Credit Co-operative Societies (SACCOs). This will help them to mobilise resources for their own personal development. It will take a very long time to formally employ our youths because they are more than the industries we have. Definitely, the Government is not the employer. It is a regulatory institution. The employers are the businesses. It will take a little bit of time to create wealth considering the drawbacks we have had at the beginning of this year. Therefore, forming economic groups for the unemployed, particularly the youth and women, will go a long way in improving their living standards. I call upon the Minister to also consider adding funds to the Youth Enterprise Development Fund and the Women Enterprise Development Fund. June 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1287 Mr. Speaker, Sir, the floating of shares of the National Bank of Kenya is a welcome move. That way, more people will share the wealth of our country as we saw in the other Initial Public Offers (IPOs). Having said that, I would like to call on the Minister to consider allocating more funds to the health sector. This is a sanitation year, and a meeting held last year in South Africa recommended that 0.05 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the region should go to sanitation. This is because a lot of diseases can be prevented by having the right sanitation such as sewerage facility, clean water for people to use and toilets in all areas even in the rural areas, where cholera outbreaks happen. Simple things like washing hand and immunization of our children can cut prevalence of diseases by half. So we need more money for promotive health than curative health. It is easier and cheaper to prevent than cure diseases. Therefore, the money which has been allocated to the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, 85 per cent, is donor money and the Government of Kenya gives only 15 per cent of the Ministry's Budget of Kshs9.5 billion. This is very low. We have to reconsider and accept the recommendation from the region. A meeting was recently held in Kisumu and the regional governments were asked to put more money in preventive health, if we want to boost production in our country. It is also true that health families and people will be able to reduce poverty. This is because they will deliver more in production. Mr. Speaker, Sir, coming to infrastructure, we welcome the idea of the Public, Private Partnership (PPPs). This is because the Asian Tigers developed their infrastructure through such measures. If we can develop our roads, telecommunication and information technology, we will be able to develop our country much faster. That way, we will be able to reduce poverty. We laud the Minister for the Nairobi Metropolitan Development. We have seen the excitement and energy he is putting in that Ministry. As a Member of Parliament from Nairobi Province, I am excited to see employment being created, especially businesses which are run throughout the night in the city. So, we look forward to seeing this Ministry being funded at a higher capacity so that we can create jobs. We would like to see also more markets built in Nairobi. For a long time, we have not had any market developed other than the Muthurwa Market. We need more markets to be established in areas where the are people at the locational and constituency level. That way, everybody would not have to crowd City Centre for small items. They can do their activities and develop where they are. Mr. Speaker, Sir, many people in Nairobi depend on kiosks . So, when we see kiosks being demolished, we get worried. So, if we can put up markets in every constituency, they will house our informal sector. As it is said, the informal sector provides livelihood to the majority of Kenyans. This will minimise the battles between the askaris and the kiosk owners over the demolition of their kiosks . This often causes hue and cry. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}