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{
"id": 193399,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/193399/?format=api",
"text_counter": 198,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Maj-Gen. Nkaisserry",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Defence",
"speaker": {
"id": 192,
"legal_name": "Joseph Kasaine Ole Nkaissery",
"slug": "joseph-nkaissery"
},
"content": " Yes, I belong to this Government, but I have four roles. First of all, I am a representative of Kajiado Central Constituency. So, I have the right to articulate issues affecting my constituency. I want my colleague to understand where I come from. I am a Government Assistant Minister, but I have the role of representation. Secondly, I have the role of legislation. The role of making laws in this Parliament. Thirdly, I have the role of oversight, like Members of Parliamentary Committees. My fourth role is that I am an implementor. If you give us the money, I implement it. So, in that capacity, I am supposed to criticise, show the best direction as well as guide, because we want this country to develop. Mr. Speaker, Sir, my colleague who spoke before me mentioned the issue of security. But not even a single mention of the issue of security is contained in the Budget Speech, apart from the welfare aspect in terms of providing funds for construction of houses for the police lines. I want hon. Members to understand that without security, there will be no development. We want to secure this country, so that we can develop it. We cannot develop this country without security. See what happened in the last three months. We need to allocate enough money to the police, who are in charge of internal security; the teeth to bite, enhance their mobility capacity and address their welfare aspects. If things go wrong, they will not be in a position to secure this country. So, the Minister should have considered looking into the security organs of this country, including the Armed Forces, because they are supposed to defend this country against external aggression. We can then come to the issues of education, health, water and agriculture. So, we should, first of all, target the security of this nation. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on physical infrastructure, the Minister mentioned roads, water as well as energy. There is no country which ever developed without an effective railway system. It is high time that our country looked into ways and means of improving the railway services. Our roads would not have been in the bad state, they are, if we had a working railway system. Most of the cargo would be transported from the Port of Mombasa all the way to our border with Uganda and transcend to Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I do not see any money allocated for the development of our railway system. The Minister has allocated Kshs62 billion to the road sector, but we want to know whether this money will benefit all the constituencies. We would like the Kenya Roads Board (KRB) money to be equally distributed, and most importantly, to those constituencies which are not fully developed. We, as Parliament, need to demand that the KRB money be distributed fairly, so that we can develop the entire country to the same level. Mr. Speaker, Sir, with regard to the money allocated to the water sector, it is important that the water boards are made to account for it. I have not seen anything which was done by the water June 18, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1257 board in my constituency, for instance, in the financial year that is coming to an end. In fact, I would propose that some of these monies should be channelled through the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF), so that we can consolidate all the resources available under one umbrella within the constituencies. That is the only way we can take care of these monies. Looking at the production sectors, in my view, the Ministry of Agriculture, for example, has not been properly funded. We have the problem of poor farmers who lost their livestock and crops after they had taken loans from the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), these farmers needed to have been cushioned in this Budget. The Minister for Finance should have allocated some money to the AFC, so that those loans could be written off. I can assure you that those poor farmers will never pay these loans. The interests are going to increase. The AFC will demand repayment from those farmers, who will not pay, because they have nothing to pay with. So, the Minister should have cushioned the AFC, so that those farmers could be given a relief in terms of repaying their loans. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as a livestock farmer, I was very disappointed with the Minister's Budget. I am grateful that the technocrats are here. I was very disappointed because the Minister just glossed over issues regarding the livestock sector, saying that the Government would put up tanneries or fish processing plants at certain places. The Southern Rift Valley region, which is the source of the bulk of the livestock in this country, was not given a single mention. As a result, so much livestock is now coming from Southern Africa, through Tanzania. So, we needed to have put up an abattoir to act as a conduit for accessing that market to support the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC), even if it means doing so through a co-operative society. So, I was not very happy in that aspect. We need abattoirs in the Central and Southern Rift Valley regions as well as in the North Eastern Province, so that we can be agents of the KMC. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the other issue which is very critical is that of land. The Government, to which I belong, should now be dealing directly with land stakeholders. We do not want organisations like the Kenya Land Alliance, whose membership comprises of people who do not own any land, to be the ones to talk about land. We, parliamentarians, are the representatives of the people. The Government should fund a forum, where all parliamentarians and other land stakeholders should sit and resolve this issue. It is very important that the land issue is finalised during the tenure of the Tenth Parliament. The Ministry of Health was given peanuts as far as I am concerned. The Kshs34 billion allocation for the two Ministries dealing with the health sector is not enough."
}