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"id": 206325,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Awori",
"speaker_title": "The Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs",
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"legal_name": "Moody Arthur Awori",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to respond on behalf of our Ministry. I am sorry that I was away last week, when the Motion was moved. I know there have been a lot of contributions to the Motion. I will respond purely from experience, because I did not have the opportunity to listen to the contributors to this Motion. First of all, I want to thank the Mover, Prof. Mango who, over a period of time in this House, has been very concerned about the issue of orphans. That is so when you look at the number of Questions that she has brought to this House for the welfare of the children. I commend her. The Motion is very well-intentioned. For any Motion that has got financial implications, the Mover should always consult the Ministry of Finance in order to see how the Government could respond. The Government recognises the plight of orphans in this country. We know what causes the children to be orphans. We know that the HIV/AIDS scourge has created very many orphans in our country. At the last count, it is believed that there are well over two million orphans in this country. Those orphans suffer a great deal. They are very vulnerable to exploitation. There are people who use them to offer child labour. Newspapers have highlighted many cases where six- year olds or seven-year olds are seen working in quarries, looking after livestock and picking coffee. We have seen ten year olds spending most of the day carrying water for very bad employers. We recognise the plight of orphans. These have even been those who have been involved in child trafficking. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to commend Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) August 29, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3521 that run orphanages around the country, particularly those of religious persuasion. They have done a commendable job. It would take a lot of money to set up orphanages around the country to take care of 2 million orphans. The last contributor has just mentioned some of the requirements of the orphans. It is not just a roof over their heads. They need food, clothing, uniforms for those who go to school and transportation. A lot of money is required. It is not easy to run orphanages even with those good intentions. There are people who have exploited orphans by running homes. They attract a lot of money from donors and yet, they do not look after the children properly. Even with all those good intentions and all the cleanliness that you find in orphanages, a child who grows up in an orphanage is not the same as one who grows up in a normal home. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Department of Children, which is in the Office of the Vice- President and Ministry of Home Affairs recognises that fact. We are trying to experiment with the system which, I believe, over the years, will be able to tackle the problems affecting orphans. We call it a Cash Transfer Scheme. We started with 500 families in five districts. We have taken an orphan and put him or her in a family where there is a man, wife and, maybe, two or three children. We supplemented the income of that family initially by Kshs500 a month and, later on, increased it to Kshs1,000 a month. Over the last 18 months, we have moved from three districts to 15 districts. We now have 5,000 children who are under that scheme. Our children officers scout around in areas where there is extreme poverty and many orphans and select a responsible family to give that child. We then give that family Kshs1,000 a month to look after the child. We have found out that, that is an extremely good system. Obviously, it has its challenges. But now that we were given money to employ more children officers, it is much easier to monitor the families where those children are. That scheme has worked extremely well in some countries. Early this year, I had the privilege of visiting Columbia in South America where the system started about eight years ago. The system has taken care of nearly 90 per cent of all orphaned children in that country and it is working very well. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, Turkey is another country where there are many orphans, partly because of the many earthquakes that have killed a good number of parents and left many orphans. They are using the same system of cash transfer and it seems to be working very well. Since we have gone many steps ahead, neighbouring countries have heard what we are doing and they have, indeed, sent some of their officers from their children departments to come and see what we are doing. We are now taking the lead in East and Central Africa and, perhaps, in the whole of Africa as the first country to try and help orphans by placing them in families. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to take this opportunity to call upon Kenyans, that with a population of 37 million people, I believe that one can say that there are, at least, 10 million families in the country. We can further say that out of the 10 million families in the country, at least, five million families can accommodate an extra child. With five million families that can take an extra child and we have 2 million orphans, surely, if each of those five million families took in a child, the issue of institutional homes would be history. That would mean that all children would be within a home. You cannot have an alternative to a home where there is maternal or paternal love. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, that is probably asking for too much of our people. With proper census showing the numbers and with us taking serious action about it, we will continue to ask the Ministry of Finance to allocate a certain amount of money, in the Budget, so that we can continue to increase the number of children that are brought under the Cash Transfer Scheme. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to thank the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) as one of the organisations that has come forward to assist us in this scheme. As we discuss with development partners, quite a number of other countries are coming aboard. However, 3522 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES August 29, 2007 as we improve our economy, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that there is sufficient money in the Budget that will help us sustain this programme. Under the circumstances, while I have no problem with this Motion, or leave to introduce a Bill to this Parliament, perhaps I would like to ask the Mover to wait a little longer so that we can see how things are going. Then I am sure, there will really be no need for this Bill to come to this House because we are already at the bottom rank of implementing what the good professor has brought in. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}