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"id": 197246,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/197246/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Ms. Ndeti",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Kathiani",
"speaker": {
"id": 109,
"legal_name": "Wavinya Ndeti",
"slug": "wavinya-ndeti"
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"content": " Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, my name is hon. Wavinya Ndeti, Member of Parliament for Kathiani Constituency. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Almighty God for giving me the opportunity to lead the people of Kathiani and Kenya. Many thanks to the Kathiani people for allowing me to be their Member of Parliament, and believing in my leadership skills. I thank them very much. I will not forget to thank my family, especially my father and my late mother for believing in me, and believing that I am capable of leading the people of Kathiani. Thank you very much. May God rest my mother in solemn peace until we meet again. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is always said that what starts badly ends up well. The way the 10th Parliament started was not good. There was a lot of bloodshed and we lost many people. But we pray to God that from now on that Kenya will be peaceful, where neighbours can live together. It was very sad for neighbours, who had lived together, to just wake up one day and start killing each other. I can tell you that most of the people who suffered were women and children. I know that from where we have started and the changes that I have seen Members of Parliament trying to make, we are going to have a peaceful and new Kenya. Our President and the Prime Minister- designate said so. So, hon. Members let us come together and bring peace to Kenya. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that we hon. Members are the blessed ones. If we look at the Bible, God chose Moses and gave him the ten commandments. It is high time we made the ten commandments for Kenya by changing the Constitution. We would like to make laws that will benefit our children and their offsprings. Let us look at the future. Let us change the Constitution with our children and their offsprings in mind. I know that the Members of Parliament who are here now are capable of doing that, and we will do that by the grace of God. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to touch on the distribution of resources. For a long time in Kenya, there has been an imbalance in the distribution of resources. We need to look at the areas that have been marginalised and try to balance distribution of resources. If I may talk about the land issue, we have many people who own big chunks of land, while March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 249 we let poor people fight for the small pieces of land that we have. We welcome foreigners to Kenya and as we do that, we would want them to own pieces of land, but the bigger chunk of land should really belong to the Kenyans themselves. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe that by changing the Constitution we are going to put in place laws that will be able to take care of the land issues in Kenya. I also would like to talk about the title deed. If we look at most of the areas, especially in Eastern Province, people own chunks of land for generations, but most of them do not have title deeds. How do we expect our people to enhance themselves economically if they cannot use the title deed as security. The Government should look into that and issue title deeds to our people. I would like to speak about water. I come from an area where we have a problem of water. It is not only in Eastern Province, I am sure that other parts of Kenya have water problems. We have rivers which drain into the Indian Ocean. It is high time we learnt how to harvest water. We should be able to hold the water that we let go into the Indian Ocean. The water that goes to the Indian Ocean is affecting the environment by raising the sea level. The water that is causing us problems after flowing into the Indian Ocean should be retained inland so as to help us. I kindly and humbly ask the Ministry of Water and Irrigation to look at the rivers of Kenya and try to help us to retain water on land, so that our people can be assisted economically. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to congratulate the Government on the construction of roads. If you look at Eastern Province, the Government is working on the roads and we applaud it for that. However, we would like it to look at the feeder roads. We cannot have one good major road and the other major feeder roads are not well constructed. So, we would like the Government to look at that. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to touch on the issue of electricity. For sure, most of the electricity in the country is generated in the Eastern Province. I can assure you that not even a quarter of the Eastern Province is lit. The House will agree with me that it is unacceptable for electricity to be generated in Parliament and then Parliament itself is not lit. So, it is high time we looked into the issue of trying to light the areas that are not lit. I should be speaking on behalf of Kenya but I am also speaking on behalf of Eastern Province. We need to have our areas lit. Our children are lagging behind on the computerization programme, because we do not have electricity. That should be looked into, because we want our children to compete with the world. Information technology is their future, and we should invest more in what will really bring our children to the same level with the outside world. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other thing that I would like to touch on is education. We need to invest more in our schools so that, again, our children can compete with the outside world. We need to make sure that education is compulsory for children up to Form IV level. No child should, really, not go to school. Whatever efforts the Government needs to put in place to ensure that children go to school, should really be adopted. So, we need our children to go to school. Still on schools, we need to invest in facilities like laboratories. That way, our children can be more exposed to the science world and, especially, information technology. I believe no school in Kenya should stay without computers. Schools in Kenya should all be computerised because, whether we like it or not, that is the future for our children. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I can stand here and say that I am a very proud Kenyan. I am one of the first pioneers of computer projects for schools. I promise my fellow Kenyans that I will not relent in that effort. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue that I would like to touch on concerns the youth. Our youth are demoralised, unemployed and devoid of hope, resulting in destructive behaviour. We need to quickly find out a way of addressing the massive waste of human resources in the future. There is a lot of unemployment among the youth. The House will agree with me that it is not that 250 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 our youth are not educated. They are well educated. Our problem is not education as I speak now. Our problem is employment. We need to create processes where we can, really, have our youth employed. How can we help our youth? We have the Youth Enterprise Development Fund which should really be channelled directly to the constituencies and ring-fenced for the youth. That will help them create job opportunities for themselves. So, I would kindly request Members of Parliament to look into that and ensure that the money that we get for development goes to the youth, especially, the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) money. Each constituency should get its money for the youth and spend it on them."
}