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"id": 197240,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Oparanya",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Butere",
"speaker": {
"id": 201,
"legal_name": "Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya",
"slug": "wycliffe-oparanya"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this important Motion. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, at the outset, I would like to introduce myself. I am hon. Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya. I represent Butere Constituency. I want to take this opportunity to thank the people of Butere for electing me to this House for the second time. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, since this is my first time to take the Floor, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate my fellow Members of Parliament and you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for having been elected to be the Deputy Speaker for the Tenth Parliament. I also want to thank hon. 244 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 Kibaki and hon. Raila for putting their interests aside and signing the Peace Accord. I do not want to forget the African prominent personalities who assisted us to get the peace that we are now enjoying. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the crisis that occurred during the last two months has given us an opportunity to actually know our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as a nation. It has given us a big lesson that will enable us to evaluate our governance structures. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I happen to have represented the Ninth Parliament in the Pan African Parliament, which has its headquarters in South Africa. Last October, there was an African Peer Review Mechanism Report on Kenya. It said very good things about Kenya; that Kenya is one of the countries that is able to manage its Budget by sourcing about 95 per cent of its revenue locally. Kenya is only able to just borrow about 5 per cent from outside. But, in the end, the Report recommended that Kenya has a major weakness. One major weakness that was pointed out in that Report was a colonial Constitution. The Report says that the Kenyan Constitution is the most talked about Constitution in the whole world. The Report went further to say that Kenya needed the international community to help it get a new Constitution. With what has happened, the Panel of African Eminent Persons will really help us, as a nation, to get a new Constitution. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other major weakness that was pointed out was uneven distribution of resources. I was in the last Parliament and my constituency got only Kshs30 million in the entire five years for development, out of a Budget of Kshs360 billion! This is 0.008 per cent! Even if we have a new Constitution, unless the issue of distribution of resources in this country is addressed within that Constitution, we will be cheating ourselves. The distribution of wealth must be even! I must thank the former Member of Parliament for Ol Kalou, Eng. Karue Muriuki, for introducing the Motion on the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) to this Parliament. Were it not for CDF, there would have been no development in my constituency. I know very well that one constituency, in the year 2007/2008 - the one we are just about to complete - got Kshs250 million to help in water projects. That is just in one particular constituency! My constituency only got Kshs30 million in the entire five-year period! Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, a Motion came here--- The Fiscal Analysis and Management Bill was debated on the Floor of this House. It reached the Committee Stage, but the Minister for Finance blocked that particular Bill! That Bill was meant to ensure that before the Budget is presented to this House, it is interrogated by that Committee so that the allocation of the Budget money is done evenly throughout the country. I would like to appeal, through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker that, that particular Bill should, again, be re-introduced to this House. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in his Presidential Speech five years ago, the President mentioned about the Sugar Act. Even during the recent Presidential Speech, he said that there will be amendments to the Sugar Act, 2001. I come from a sugar-cane growing area and I can tell you that we have had a raw deal. We have talked about the Sugar Act severally. We were frustrated here on the Floor of this House by the former Minister for Agriculture. This was because some of the powers were being removed from his office. I hope that those people who will be appointed to the Cabinet will not look at their interests first, but at the interests of wananchi. We have talked about amendments to the Sugar Act all along. Half of the provisions of the Sugar Act cannot be implemented and that is why we came up with amendments. We spent a lot of money and we even went for workshops in Mombasa and met the stakeholders, but the amendments were not debated by the Ninth Parliament. We know very well that the structures that were set up in the Sugar Act, namely, the out- growers and the millers continue to milk the farmers. The major shareholder in the sugar industry is the Government, which owns Muhoroni, Nzoia and Chemilil sugar factories. Even 20 per cent of Mumias Sugar Factory is owned by the Government. The Government keeps on talking about March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 245 amendments to the Sugar Act while it is the major culprit. We have obsolete machinery. Who is supposed to replace those obsolete machinery? It is the Government because it is the one that owns the sugar companies. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Government is unwilling to increase the production of sugar because it wants to continue importing sugar. That is where the money is. We have always extended the COMESA safeguard period. We were given a period of up to April this year, but it has now been extended for another four years. Last time when they extended the period, they said that the Government would make sure that there would be enough money to increase the production of sugar in this country. This has not happened. In the entire five years, there was no budgetary provision for the sugar farmers. Luckily, the tea farmers got Kshs600 million in the current Budget. The pyrethrum farmers also got a similar amount of money, but the sugar farmers got nothing. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}