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"id": 197232,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/197232/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. K. Kones",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Bomet",
"speaker": {
"id": 176,
"legal_name": "Kipkalya Kones ( Deceased)",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this very important Motion. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to, first of all, thank my constituents for re-electing me for the fourth time to this august House. I would also like to thank God for allowing me to sit in this House now for the fifth time consecutively. Allow me also to thank Members of Parliament for what they did yesterday. It was a historic moment that Members of Parliament from both sides of the House came together to put this country on the right track. I would like to thank our Principals; His Excellency the President, hon. Mwai Kibaki and the Prime Minister-designate, hon. Raila Odinga, for what they did for this country. Now we have one country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, allow me also to thank the Panel of Eminent Persons who, when they saw that Kenya was on fire, came to our aid. Particularly, I would like to thank Dr. Kofi Annan for what he did. He meant his words when he said he would not leave this country until things were on the right track. Evidently, he did not leave this country until things were on the right track. I would like to thank him most sincerely for elevating the talks to the Principals. That is when we were able to strike a balance. I hope this country now will be one and that it will not have to go through the problems it went through. I also hope that we have learnt some lessons. If, indeed, we learnt some lessons, I suppose we will not repeat the same mistakes we made. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think we have been taking peace for granted for a long time in this country. When we lost it, we saw its importance. We do not want to see this kind of thing happening to our children in future. I think we have to respect each other and each other's opinion all the time. We do not want to see what we saw happening in this country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I thank the President for what he has done for this country. In his Speech, he talked of setting up humanitarian teams to look into what happened after the post- election violence. I hope there will be fairness in the whole exercise. As much as we are talking about the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who are now living in camps, I think we should not forget the fact that there are other people who suffered the same consequences. These people are not necessarily living in IDPs camps. We have a lot of people who got displaced. Some of them have gone to live with their relatives. Their children have had to shift schools because they left their areas of normal operations. However, we do not see them in those camps. Sometimes, we mistake this and say they are peaceful. They are not. I hope when those teams go out, they will identify who actually suffered out of the violence. There are also people who are in those camps who actually were never evicted at all. They chose on their own to leave their homesteads because they felt very unsafe. When we start resettling these people, I suppose we will do it very carefully. I hope we will not push people to go back to where they lived prior to post-election violence. We must take the necessary care to know exactly whether they are willing to go back there or not. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is a very delicate exercise. It is so delicate that I think we who 238 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 come from the areas where these problems were will be involved in the exercise. We do not want to see an exercise that will be imposed on our people. We want actually to be involved because we know what is happening on the ground. I suppose that if we all of us are involved in the exercise, we will get a permanent solution to this problem. We should avoid appointing some officers who will just force the IDPs to go back to where they came from. I also think that, before we do so, we should address ourselves to the historical problems that may have triggered the crisis. Those of us who come from Rift Valley Province, we experience these kinds of things almost every year. We need to know the root cause of these things. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, sometimes we get into an almost fully-fledged tribal war just out of a small quarrel in a bar. It is a pity that two people quarrel in a bar, then the next day the whole two tribes are at war. There must be something underlying these things. There must be some bitterness that has built up over the years. Let us not just look at it from the surface. We need to go deep into this thing and find out exactly what is this bitterness among these communities. We would like to see the end of this. Nobody wants to see these things happening always. We would like to live together. We would like to see communities co-existing. Let us not treat it like a case that is so simple. It is not simple. We need to look at it much more seriously. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the President talked about improving agriculture, but he never said anything about the farmers who are involved in exports. I have in mind a crop called tea. Today, the tea farmer is almost the poorest farmer in this country. From the face value, we imagine that he is the richest person in this country. He is poor because the exchange rates are very unattractive to him. When we exchange a Kenyan shilling with a dollar, the tea farmer gets almost nothing. So, I think the President, probably, could have gone one step further to urge farmers to add value to their tea before they export it, so that they get the maximum profit. Currently, tea farmers are getting peanuts. Something must be done to alleviate the plight of the tea and horticultural farmers. They are doing so well for this country. But, at the end of the day, they are the ones who actually go home with nothing in their pockets. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, still on agriculture, the prices of fertiliser are almost impossible for a farmer. A bag of fertiliser is costing almost Kshs4,000 and yet, the prices of crops have not improved at all. What are we going to do about it? Why can the Government not be bold enough and subsidise this kind of commodity? Otherwise, unless we do so, we will discourage farmers from actually producing what we need for this country. Very soon, we will be net importers of our own food crops, particularly maize, wheat and rice. The farmer is finding it so difficult to produce these crops. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to commend the President for what he talked about the youth. He said there will be a definite strategy by the Government to make sure that they are brought on board. He talked about job creation for them. The biggest problem that this country is facing today is that the youth are feeling totally neglected. They feel that they are not part of this society. In fact, what happens is that when post-election violence broke out, they found something to do. That is why they caused all the damage we witnessed in this country. They have been staying idle at home without employment. There is nothing happening to them. It is sad that they do not feel as part and parcel of this country. I think we should go towards that direction of engaging our youth to make them part of the society. I think that will be a good thing. But let it not be like the last time, when we promised our youth 500,000 jobs to be created per year and produced nothing. I think what we managed to do was to introduce boda boda and things like that. But that is not what we think is actually a good employment opportunity. Some of the youth have gone to school and are very educated. I think it is up to the Government to offer them jobs. But we can only do that in a good environment where we have peace and investors coming to this country. We think there is going to be employment for our March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 239 youth. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to commend the President for the proposed direct election of mayors and chairmen. In the past, we have witnessed cases of corruption during the election of mayors and chairmen of local authorities. Knowing that we are going to have direct elections of mayors and chairmen of local authorities, I think it is going to be a good thing. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}