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"id": 197277,
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"speaker_name": "Dr. Gesami",
"speaker_title": "The Member for West Mugirango",
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"legal_name": "James Ondicho Gesami",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. My names are Dr. James Gesami, the Member of Parliament for West Mugirango Constituency. I want to thank the people of West Mugirango for giving me an opportunity to come to this House and serve them. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to say that the President's Speech was quite exhaustive in terms of coverage. Basically, the President covered issues on security. I would like to say that, on the issue of security, Kenyans want security to be improved in this country. It is very bad! The police force needs to be re-trained and paid more money so that, it can stop arresting people in order to get money. Today, you see police officers outside there wearing torn clothes. I think it is a shame for a country like ours to have a police force officer with repaired shirts and shoes. I think the Government needs to improve on the remuneration of the police force. It should also be given a better uniform of high quality. We should not give them shirts that, once they are washed, they change colour. So, we want the Government to make sure that the police force is provided with better uniforms and laundry facilities. Mr. Speaker, Sir, politics is about equity. We have now created several districts. We know that we have 210 constituencies. Most Kenyans feel that we should change every constituency to be a district on its own, so that we can give constituencies resources directly. The constituencies should have district commissioners, district accountants and all the heads of departments managing their affairs. One teacher told me that politics is about equity. We need to look at that issue in this House and make sure that we very carefully re-look at the way we distribute both financial and human resources. It is because of the imbalance of distributing those resources that, actually, we had a lot of problems in the post-election era. The President also touched on education. I am happy that hon. Musila has touched on KNEC. In our view, it is very bad to have a child being given A- and later, being brought down to C-. It is very bad and demoralising. We need to look at KNEC and, if possible, disband it like the way we want to disband the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). On the issue of health, I think we have done very well on primary health care and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We need to look at the issue of drugs availability in some of our hospitals. I have noted that, in fact, a drug as essential as insulin - and most of us are beginning to develop diabetes--- We need that drug to be available in most of the hospitals to help the people. We also feel that provincial hospitals, really, should be well-equipped, so that we do not get referrals from Mombasa to Nairobi. All specialists in those hospitals should be actually available in those provincial hospitals. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the issue of agriculture, I want to join my colleagues in talking about the tea industry. There is a lot of variation in payments between regions in this country. The Ministry of Agriculture needs to look at what should be done. Why should region \"b\", for example, March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 269 earn more than region \"d\"? It is important that we look at this issue, so that we encourage farmers. The cost of farm inputs, especially fertilizer, has gone up. We need to look at how the Government can subsidize those inputs. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the issue of the new Constitution, we want to make the presidency irrelevant in this House. We do not want to mind where the President comes from. What actually happened in December was because somebody wanted the President to come from their region, so that they could get a bigger share. We want to look at the Constitution and overhaul it. We should not really mind where the President comes from, whether from the Coast, Nyanza or Central Province. Therefore, we need that Constitution as soon as yesterday. We need to work harder, so that we finish working on it before the 12 months we were told about here. Mr. Speaker, Sir, with those few remarks, I beg to support the Motion on the Presidential Address."
}