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"id": 194795,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/194795/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology",
"speaker": {
"id": 190,
"legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
"slug": "kilemi-mwiria"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to support this very important Motion and to congratulate the Mover for bringing it. I would also like to support the amendment by Mr. Mbadi because the problem in this country has not just been post-election violence, but also the drought that has affected many parts of this country. In this regard, therefore, I think we also need to go beyond just talking about drought, ethnic violence and so on. This is because the problems facing our farmers have been there. Although they may not have been severe as they have been this year, these problems have been there. Therefore, it is important that we also think of alternative means of livelihood for our people. In this regard, I would like to congratulate the Grand Coalition Government for coming up with the Ministry of Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands. This is because Kenya 874 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 7, 2008 continues to have only one side that is arable. There is a lot of land that is not being exploited yet that could be done if we had the right focus. Many examples have been given of countries that are drier than the northern part of Kenya. For example, Israel, Egypt and so on. I hope, therefore, that the Ministry of Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands will address those issues to ensure that we harness the potential that we have not exploited from that part of this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also need to think of other ways of diversifying the means of income. In this regard, I think we still have not done enough in industry. Since we now have the Ministry of Industrialization, there is going to be much more emphasis placed in terms of what it is that we can do to ensure that we have industries across the country and not just in a specific part of the country so that many of our young people do not think that the only way to survive is to have a small piece of land in some place in the Rift Valley Province or Meru. They need to know that there are other opportunities. It is important for us to address the issues of the poor people of this country just as it is important to address the issues of social inequality. A lot of the poor people, like we have said before, are exploited by people of means; people who are very well off, including politicians who are doing very well. We have far too many poor people and the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing since Independence. Instead of it reducing, as we expected, it has been widening. We should go back to the basics and ask ourselves why that has been the case. One area that has been a problem is education. Indeed, education in this country has continued to intensify the gap between the rich and the poor. Even opportunities that were available for poor peasants and workers to move through the system are now almost closed with the coming of academies and private tutoring. It is the children of people like us who can access the best education and, therefore, the best jobs. We need to address that. As long as we have a country whereby the majority of children who go to the best schools come from, say, 10 per cent of the population and the majority who do the best degree programmes in our universities, like Engineering, Medicine and so on, come from a countable number of the population, then that is trouble. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, what is happening is that you are refusing opportunities for the poor to be upwardly mobile in other ways so that everybody thinks that only primitive accumulation and farming on small portions of land will make a difference. So, that issue has to be addressed. We have to address the wider context of inequality. It is not just about ethnic clashes. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also have to look at issues about unemployment. Here again, is a major issue of inequality. Who is getting good jobs in this country? Are they the young people who go through public institutions and go to the public universities or those who go to the private universities with lesser qualifications? They will go to India or private universities in this country, but still get the best jobs because they are well-connected. Their parents are doing well and so they can get them jobs. Again, that is an issue of inequality. We must find a way whereby even the poor can access good jobs so that you do not have to belong to a certain family in order for you to get employment. This remains a big problem. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, also related to the wider issue about inequality, is the whole issue of land ownership. We have been talking about ethnic clashes and people who do not own even one-tenth of the mass of this country. It is a very small proportion we are talking about. What is happening to the rest of the land, a lot of which is owned by absentee landlords and people who appropriated ADC farms and so on? There is a lot of land that we can still redistribute to ensure that everybody does not get crowded in the Rift Valley Province and that the same province does not become the basis for ethnic contest. This is because there is a lot of other land that we are not paying attention to in terms of redistributing it to our people. May 7, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 875"
}