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"id": 197284,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/197284/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mrs. Kilimo",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Marakwet East",
"speaker": {
"id": 173,
"legal_name": "Linah Jebii Kilimo",
"slug": "linah-kilimo"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the President's Speech. Before I start, I would like to thank the people of Marakwet East Constituency for electing me for the second time and showing confidence that I am able to take care of their resources despite the great persuasion by the ODM luminaries and their supporters. I am grateful to my constituents. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the President talked about amending the Armed Forces Act so that people from the National Youth Service (NYS) can be recruited into the Kenya Armed Forces. However, people from Marakwet East, where we are pastoralists, are never recruited into the NYS. First of all, they recruit people from the streets and yet we do not have streets in my part of the world. All we have are paths and trees under which young men sit designing what to do when there is nothing good for them to do. I hope that as they amend the Armed Forces Act, they will ensure that the 272 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 19, 2008 youth who are recruited to join the NYS are taken from every part of this country. It is my appeal and wish that this Tenth Parliament will legislate that every youth, after finishing Form Four, should join the NYS. We should then increase the NYS training centres. We do not need to have Gilgil only as the training centre for the NYS. How many people can be trained in the NYS, Gilgil Training Centre? We should have training centres in every province so that all the children who leave Form Four can go there to be trained. Mr. Speaker, Sir, last year, the Government came up with something called the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF). This Fund is meant to benefit people who have just completed Form Four. They worked hard to pass examinations and others have tarmacked for five years or so and the only business they know is \"tarmacking\" looking for jobs. They have been given money from the YEDF so that they can start business. What business do you start when you do not have the knowledge to run a business? My suggestion is that the NYS should link up with the Kenya Industrial Estates (KIE). They should go to the provinces and teach our children who have completed Form Four about business opportunities. We should have entrepreneurs going to train them on what kind of business they can do. The only brains they have when they complete school are those for Biology, English and other general subjects. They should be taught about business opportunities that are there for them because not everybody can get a white collar job. That is the time when the YEDF will really have a meaning. Mr. Speaker, Sir, still on the YEDF, they told children, who even do not know where banks are, to go to certain banks and ask for the money. They were then told to ask their fathers to give them title deeds. What happens to the children who come from the pastoralist communities and the vast areas of Rift Valley Province where demarcation of land has not been done? We do not have title deeds and yet we are required to take them to a bank whose location we do not know so that we can access money from the YEDF! It is a total failure on the part of the Ministry of Youth Affairs for them to come up with a Fund that up to now, very few people have accessed. The much I know is that the only people who have benefitted are those from urban areas who have gone for some training in business. The youth were told to come up with groups. How do the young men just come up with groups in order to go and borrow money? A group of jobless people under the table is required to borrow money! There should be one of them on top of the table to pull the rest up. We should review all these things as we think about the youth of this country. Mr. Speaker, Sir, on the issue of education, I really appreciate that the free primary education, so that we can have more children learning how to read and write, before we even think of them completing Form IV and going to universities. However, for the last five years, the Ministry of Education has been promising us something called \"model schools\". For five years, I have been giving the name of a school to be developed into a model school. However, five years have gone by and nothing has happened. What happened? The constituents think that you have taken that money together with the Ministry of Education. They have embarrassed us! They should keep their word and put up the model schools. Another thing about education is the computer selection to Form I. I think it is tribal! Whoever fed the computers gave them the wrong information. That is because, in my constituency, people are coming from Mwingi and the Mt. Kenya region and reporting to schools in my area. I have not seen any of my people being called to those sides. What is wrong with those computers? They are very selective! What was fed into them? I think they should be reviewed. Since we are setting a healing process, the Ministry of Education should \"heal\" the selection of schools, so that we can have some of our children even in the \"big schools\"! The development of educational institutions is better in some areas than in others. March 19, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 273 Mr. Speaker, Sir, I would like to talk about the forests. Indeed, the President talked about environmental conservation. There are people who, because of land pressure, have encroached on the forests. They were promised that they will be resettled. However, as I speak now, since 1933, forest re-alignment has never been done in my constituency. Every year, they burn houses in the forest. People come out of the forests and when those who burn the houses leave, they go back and build more houses. That is happening despite the fact that they were promised to be resettled. We were even promised that there would be a forest re-alignment because the then Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, who is now the Vice-President, came to my constituency and said: \"Okay! We are going to review the re-alignment of the forest so that we can curve out some little land for you. That way, your houses will not be burnt in the forest\". But what has happened? It is high time the Government went there and resettled those who are displaced. I also have some displaced people from the forest who should be considered for resettlement. Finally, I would like to speak about the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). I appreciate the work that it has done. It has done a lot of reconstruction throughout Kenya and, more so, in my constituency. It is unfortunate that one hon. Member complained about children still learning under trees. How can that happen under the era of CDF? But it is not enough! We said it in the Ninth Parliament. The 2.5 per cent is not enough! We want it to be increased. However, even as we increase it, the wheel behind the development of our nation - the women - are never considered. All we get out of CDF is the money that we earn through preparing porridge for the men involved in construction. We want to be considered as the women of this country. Some part of CDF should be given to women."
}