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{
"id": 194550,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/194550/?format=api",
"text_counter": 186,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Wekesa",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Forestry and Wildlife",
"speaker": {
"id": 209,
"legal_name": "Noah Mahalang'ang'a Wekesa",
"slug": "noah-wekesa"
},
"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I would like to support this Bill. I do not want to repeat what my colleagues have said. I just want to highlight one or two areas. First, we now have a Grand Coalition. This is a Government that has been formed through negotiations. It has established the Office of the Prime Minister, who is going to work very closely with His Excellency the President. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us, as hon. Members, to ensure that this 990 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 13, 2008 Coalition succeeds. We only have four and a half years to go. I can assure hon. Members that this is not a very long time. It is a very short period in which we must use all our efforts to unite Kenyans and establish a new Kenya; a Kenya that will be a reference point in Africa. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we created the first coalition in 2002, there were so many people who requested to know what we had done in Kenya to form a coalition. Five years down the road we have come up with a Grand Coalition. Again, Kenya is going to be a reference point. People are going to say: \"We want to do what Kenya did\". We may take this Grand Coalition lightly, but I can see that we have done something in Africa that is going to be emulated by many countries. It is upon us to pass this Bill to make sure that, since we established the Office of the Prime Minister, we give it the necessary equipment and tools for him to be able to serve Kenyans. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the new Ministries that my colleagues have referred to are very important. I am very excited about my Ministry, the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife. But before I make comments on that, I can also say that I am very excited about the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development that is being headed by an eminent lawyer, Mr. M. Kilonzo. When you look at the transport system in Nairobi, it is clogged up. If you leave your house at 7.30 a.m. to come to the centre of town, depending on where you live, you are likely to take 30 to 40 minutes get there. We need to do something about our roads and the railway system within the metropolis. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have always wondered why we never thought of ring roads. When I travel in Europe, every little town has got a ring road. If you are not going into that town to do business, for example, if you are going to Mombasa and you are coming from the Rift, you have no business coming through the City of Nairobi. But we do pass through the City. So we spend about an hour trying to traverse Nairobi. If we had a ring road through the Ngong Hills, we could leave Naivasha and go straight, and even by pass Mlolongo. This way we would save a lot of time. I am excited about that Ministry, because I can see the Minister for Nairobi Metropolitan Development addressing issues of technology, saving time and making sure that Nairobi is not only clean, but is also a hub of activity that is supplied by good communication. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife is also very exciting. We have seen what has happened to the forests in this country. If you drive down to Nakuru you will see what looks like a forest. But if you were to over fly that area, you would find that actually we do not have a forest. There has been illegal logging over the years, and more so during the last three or four months, that is from January to March, when we had the post-election violence. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, certain people have gone into our forests and added onto what actually has been happening in the last ten years. The so called ban has been there. However, I think this ban was to ensure that certain characters loot our resources. So, we have a momentous duty to ensure that we have mechanisms in place. With the new law that has set up the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), we are hoping that we can relook at that law and make sure that we are doing something, so that in 15 to 20 years to come, we have forests again that we can boast of. We can increase the percentage of forest cover which is dismally low now. It should be 10 per cent, but it is very low. Looking at the wildlife also, which is a cash cow for the tourism industry, we need to protect this natural resource and ensure that tourists come back to Kenya to see the wonderful animals like the \"Big Five\" that tend to attract most of them. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am reading through correspondences and interviewing people. Yes, I would like to make statements about the Ministry, but I am taking my time because the challenges that are within KWS and KFS are of a momentous nature. I need to really get to the grip of the problem before we can make any changes. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was at the launch of a Harambee for Internally May 13, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 991 Displaced Persons (IDPs). I was disappointed to see a few Members of Parliament there. I talked to the Speaker, our colleague who assured me that efforts are going to be made for Members of Parliament, through a check off system to actually contribute to the resettlement efforts that the Government has undertaken of the IDPs. This is very commendable. I want to commend the President for launching this effort because as the hon. Member for Parliament for Amagoro has pointed out, I am one of the victims of this post-election violence. I have had 10,000 IDPs at Endebess. Only half of them, have been able to go back because of the threats of insecurity that are still in that area. However, it is very important that all of us join the Government and our leaders to preach peace. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is upon as politicians to guard what we say in public. If we, as Members of Parliament, must preach peace to our people because we are brothers and sisters. It must start with us politicians by talking to our people about the need to live as brothers and sisters. That is where we can start uniting our people. More often than not, I have noticed that what Members of Parliament say to their people is very important. So, in Kwanza Constituency, we have tried to moderate our language. We are even preaching peace to the victims of this violence and saying that let us forgive those ones that burnt our houses and maize stores and killed our children. We are preaching peace. I would like to implore my colleagues here that we have a very short period to live together. If we should preach peace to our people in order to save this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, therefore, I want to state very clearly that it is very important that we should not have IDP camps in the next two months. We, as a Government, must ensure that when these people go back, they are not threatened and attacked because that is the fear that has made some of them not to go back. What we forget is that some of these IDPs do not have anywhere to go to. I have a situation in my constituency in a farm called Kataga which was the first place to be attacked in my constituency. This is a coffee farm on the slopes of Mount Elgon and employees' huts were burnt down. Two to three people were killed and, therefore, everybody left to go to the market at Endebess. Now, we are asking them to go back but they were only workers on this farm and the owners of this farm also actually fled. So, they are not there. So, we are asking them to go back and yet their masters are not on their farms. So, these are the problems that we have. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, also another problem that we have is that we politicians must be able to bring the two communities that caused the problem together. Unless we talk reconciliation before these people go back, there is fear that when they go back they will be attacked again. So, we need to really get the elders to speak to each other so that there is a bit of reconciliation and forgiveness. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am about to end my comments, but I cannot forget to mention something about roads. Last year in Trans Nzoia District, we got very heavy rains and many roads as the hon. Member for Amagoro has indicated actually got affected. I have a bridge on River Sabwani at Namanjalala which was washed away. About two months ago, I visited the Ministry of Roads and Public Works. This is a very important road linking Kitale Town with Kolongolo right up to West Pokot District. It is a major road, but it is now closed because the bridge was washed away. So, again, these funds should be used to address issues such as the one my colleague talked about. It is important that we make sure that the roads are passable. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, also it is at the end of the planting season in Trans Nzoia. We have a problem of escalation of prices of fertiliser. This is not a problem to Kenya only, but it is a problem from outside since transportation and freight costs have escalated. Therefore, our farmers are paying far too much, in fact, three times the price of fertilisers that we bought last year. We hope that some of the money that is being appropriated to the Ministry of Agriculture will be used to offset some of these debts. Unless we ensure that farmers have fertilizers at affordable 992 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 13, 2008 prices, we will get into a problem of looking for food at the end of this year. Therefore, I would like to end by saying that all of us have a challenge as hon. Members and as a Government. We have to make sure that this Government will restore credibility to Kenya so that tourists can come back. Most of our young people who are unemployed can get jobs in the hotel and construction industry. We should also impress upon our friends outside Kenya, who have always assisted us, so that they can start coming back as tourists. The international community has also been with us during the post-election violence. I remember some of them pledged that they will assist us to revamp the economy. We are still waiting for our colleagues and friends outside Kenya to come and join the Government in its efforts to revamp the economy. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}