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"id": 197181,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Onyonka",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Kitutu Chache",
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"id": 128,
"legal_name": "Richard Momoima Onyonka",
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"content": " Thank you Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for having noticed me. It is an honour to be in this House. I am very lucky because this is something I have dreamt of for 13 years. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my name is Richard Momoima Onyonka. I come from Kitutu Chache Constituency. First of all, I would like to thank the Chair, because I participated gleefully in the election of the Speaker; that is Mr. Marende. I would like to thank hon. Members of this House who have been very resourceful. They have become very friendly and I have learnt a lot since I came to this House. I would like to thank the people of Kitutu Chache for having taken me seriously, when I asked them to vote for me. Like all the other hon. Members have been saying, I think I face the challenge. I promise to do the best I can. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, lastly, I would like to thank the hon. Mwai Kibaki, the President of the Republic of Kenya and hon. Raila Amolo Odinga, now the Prime Minister- designate, for having made sure that this country did not collapse and gave us another chance. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other thing that I would like to do is pass my sympathies to the people who were displaced in this country, and the many lives we lost during the crisis. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to react to some of the issues that the President raised during his Address. I happened to have been a student of economic development at the University of Nairobi. The problems that we have in this country are all about development. March 20, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 335 Since the time I was in school until the time I became an hon. Member of Parliament, the issues we have been discussing and talking about are about the inequality of incomes and resources between different tribes who form the whole. That is the issue that I think this House must look into very seriously. When you look at development issues, I can give an example; look at education. I am not going to look at the whole education policy, because doing that would take a whole day. We all know that for our students to do well in school, we need nursery schools. We get nursery school teachers, as I heard one hon. Member mention in this House, trained by the Government but they are not given jobs. This happens yet we know that for a child to do well in school, they must first attend a grassroots institution, the lowest level to make sure that the child is educated from the time they are two or three years old. Something must be done about this. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have a problem with water resources in this country. Many of our people drink dirty water 45 years after Independence. We have a problem with health facilities in this country. After 45 years, our people cannot go to hospitals and get medicine. Women cannot go to maternity hospitals and get treated. The story goes on and on. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, many of our people are under-employed and unemployed because we do not have electricity. In some occasions, electricity has been distributed across the country according to how you voted for who was in power at that particular time. This country needs an electricity policy to enable distribution of electricity equitably to the whole nation, depending on its availability on the grid. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker Sir, I come from Kisii and you know we grow a lot of tea. There was a time when the Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA) came up with a policy, whereby there was decentralisation. Private individuals could buy tea and take it to the KTDA agencies. However, the policy has failed. This House will have to come up with a solution to that, because the farmer is losing more to the middlemen than before. When I look at all these issues, I think one of the most immediate solutions to this problem is the need to increase the allocation of the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). That is why I have always been sympathetic to the ODM team. They have always said that they would increase the CDF allocation to about 10 per cent. I hope we will achieve that during my time in this House. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the issues that I want to raise is political. Right now, the Government is now forming different districts in different areas. We do not know the criteria used. We do not know whether there is any statistical data, or benchmarks that make the Government create these districts. Right now we have some constituencies which cut across districts; in some cases three or four constituencies share one district. This inequity must be changed, or something must be done by this House, so that when the Constitution Review Commission is formed, we will have a criteria on how to create districts and constituencies. For example, I would like to create a district called Marani District, so that we have Kitutu Chache Constituency covering both Kisii District and Marani District. The total number of registered voters in my constituency is about 90,000. For one constituency, that is a very big number. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue I want to raise in this House is the fact that we need reconciliation. I think that this House must sit down and evaluate the relevance of having vernacular radio stations. The post-election issues which came up, when you were listening to the analysis and what was happening, were that vernacular radio stations participated and contributed to making this country more tribal than it was before. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we need to do something about the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). I do not have to belabour the point. On top of that, I would like us to be very careful when looking at the issue of those who created the violence. We must be sensitive and should not look like we are being revengeful. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to make a recommendation to this 336 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 20, 2008 House in response to what the President said, that this country needs people to look back and do a total analysis, historical or otherwise, of what has happened from 1960 up to 2007. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the last point that I would like to make is that this is a wonderful country. Some of us dreamt for very many years of coming to this House to make a change. I hope that we will be given an opportunity by our friends, and all the people of goodwill in this country, to make Kenya the best country in Africa. Thank you."
}