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"id": 196034,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Farah",
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"legal_name": "Farah Maalim Mohamed",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not know why Maj. Sugow would want me to be gagged in this House. I support this Motion. It is important that we have fewer documents, and it is also important that we take into consideration the number of man-hours we use every time we have to go for these documents. We spend hundreds of man-hours and we lose so much. If that could be converted into capital, this country would be a First World country. But because we spend a lot of time in trying to get those documents, we are losing a lot. It will be very important for them to be combined into one. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with the reforms that this country needs to go through, it is important that we are on the cutting edge of technology in a manner that, essentially, we cannot industrialise and become a First World country. We cannot achieve our Vision 2030. I congratulate the new Minister who has been appointed to that docket. But I want to tell him that every ill in the Kenyan society is in the Registration Department of his Ministry. It has the highest corruption because nobody gets an Identification (ID) Card without paying something. It has discrimination against the Constitution of this country. We have a provision in the Constitution of this country that prohibits discrimination. If you go to seek an ID card and you are a Luo born in Kisumu named Mr. George Otieno, you will have far less problems getting that ID card than if your name is Musa or Mohamed Otieno. The moment that Islamic name is there, then it becomes a different ball-game altogether. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is easier, sometimes, for foreigners to get those papers than Kenyans, because they will be prepared to pay a lot of money for them. We have a problem in North Eastern Province. It is also used for political purposes. In my strongholds in my constituency, the people who were charged with the responsibility of registering the people as far back as 2005 and 2006 were prevailed upon, corruptly, to make sure that the process of issuance of ID cards was not done in those areas until after the elections. There is a division called Liboi in my constituency. There is also a location called Amajale. The number of people who were able to vote in the last general elections was less than 15 per cent of the potential ones. Every time they go there, they make sure that they come back from that place without registering those people. They have done it now and again. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is a tendency to send--- It is a department that has almost a total exclusion of certain communities in this country. If you go to the Department of Registration of Persons, you will hardly see somebody from North Eastern Province. You will not see a Pokot. You will have a problem seeing a Turkana or a Maasai. It is a very bad situation. Consequently, the people who are suffering most are also those ones. Muslims, of course, is a different ball-game altogether. The moment you are a Muslim, you belong to another country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I agree with what an hon. Member said sometimes back. Be careful of the big brother at times! That is because I had an intention initially of saying 602 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 23, 2008 that we might even want to put in a sensor. Like the poor young man who was killed while working with the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). He was doing a very good. If we had a sensor in his ID card, we would probably have known where he was killed. The same can apply to people who get lost. If we can put also a small sensor chip--- Much as the \"big brother\" issue is there, we cannot afford to be left behind because the rest of the world is going there. It is the same way you can be located using your own mobile phone. If you remember our very courageous and gallant pilot Maj. Nyanjui of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), he survived in the slopes of Mt. Kenya. It is through his mobile phone that he was finally located. With that, it is possible, maybe, that we can look at the cutting edge technology and see whether we can have a chip in the event of a disaster--- Like the kind of disasters that we have had in the country here, where a whole house collapses and we do not know how many people are buried under. If we could have that kind of a technology - a kind of chip in the pockets of Kenyans over 18 years, then it would be easier for us also to respond to some of the disasters and save our own people. So, that is another technology that the Minister can have a look into. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister has a big task to perform. He is also a big man, both in size and mind. He has also \"pambanad \" for a long time. Please, let us see that"
}