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{
    "id": 196196,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/196196/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 138,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mrs. Ngilu",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Water and Irrigation",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 111,
        "legal_name": "Charity Kaluki Ngilu",
        "slug": "charity-ngilu"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I stand to support this Motion. I think a lot has happened in this country since last year's General Elections. I think all of us who were running for office had something to do with the problems that we are having. Those mothers and children who have been living out of their homes for the last four months--- Every time you watch them speaking on television, they blame us. They ask themselves: \"Why did we, in the first place, leave our homes to go and vote for these leaders?\" As we debate this Motion this afternoon, we need to understand their suffering. We should not treat this as any other debate in this House. I believe that we cannot take this issue of IDPs and hope to solve it in a technical way. I do appreciate the meetings that were held yesterday and other days, between leaders. If I were there, I would have urged the Prime Minister and the President to, indeed, involve leaders in a more intimate way. I do know that they talked about these issues. They said that they should visit the affected areas. But it needs to come from the people themselves. I do not think this can come from top leaders and expect that the people on the ground will just listen to them. In actual fact, I do not even think that these people would treat us seriously. It may not even be easy for His Excellency the President and the Prime Minister to go and talk to them and tell them that they would like them to go back to their farms. We have all said that we would like to see the IDPs go back to their farms. However, we cannot force neighbours to live together in harmony, if they do not respect each other. We cannot make a person not to go against their neighbour if they have not lived well in the past, by putting up a police station. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we all know that the Government has spent a lot of money in the past to buy land in various places. We also know that part of the problem that we are having in this country is due to inequality. April 23, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 651 In this House, for example, there are many of us who have tracts of land lying somewhere idle, but we expect the IDPs to go back to their one or two acre farms!"
}