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"id": 206385,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/206385/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Ahenda",
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"speaker": {
"id": 256,
"legal_name": "Paddy Ahenda",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity. I thank the laureate, Prof. Maathai, but I would like to put it bluntly that when you talk of ASAL, you think of a desert. The simple answer is to plant trees there then there will be no ASAL. It is the trees that are missing in those areas. If you talk of any place where there are trees, it is not considered as ASAL. There is no country in this world that is fully developed. All of us are still developing, but the so-called First World coins some words to keep the developing countries 3536 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES August 29, 2007 down. They started by calling us under-developed, least-developed, developing, and have used all manner of adjectives to describe the Third World countries, mainly because of the ASALs. But if you go to the USA, they have all types of vegetation areas, including deserts. They are there but they developed them! However, I thank Prof. Ojiambo for bringing here such a wonderful Motion, and I stand here to support it. If this will culminate in the Bill for land development and utilisation, then we will have no more ASAL in this country. If you go to those areas considered as ASAL, they have some of the richest lands in this country, where you do not even need fertilisers to plant anything. The land is very rich but one major thing it lacks is water for anything to grow on it. Just about a week ago, or so, we had the Vote for the Ministry of Water and Irrigation. One of things that were captured in the Vote was whether the Ministry could transform ASALs by pumping water into them. The heaviest rains fall in some of the ASAL ares, maybe once a year. However, all the water goes down to rivers, lakes and seas. I was in Samburu sometime early this year, and saw that Mr. Lesrima's constituency is vast. It is almost 600 miles wide. You can even create a man-made lake in those areas. If a lake is created in those areas, the water that will be collected in such a lake can transform the entire area and the word \"ASAL\" will be a thing of the past. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this reminds me of a few years back, when I was in high school and I was sharing a dormitory with a student from North Eastern Province. That student literally wept when I took a bucket of water and poured it down, when we were doing the cleaning over the weekend. That was his first weekend in the school. He had never seen somebody who can take a bucket of water and just poor it down. The boy broke into tears. When we asked him why he was crying, he said: \"Can you not see that Paddy is wasting water?\" I said: \"But we are doing the cleaning!\" He said: \"But how can you take a whole bucket of water and pour it down?\" Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, water is life in those areas. Pouring down a whole bucket of water on the floor made that boy burst into tears. The first thing the Bill should do, when it is enacted into law, is to provide water to those areas. Water will be used to irrigate the entire arid and semi-arid areas. If we could construct man-made lakes--- Actually, even in India, there is a huge man-made lake which is 100 miles long, 50 miles wide and two miles deep! They are lakes that look like oceans! They can even use it for transport. That alone will transform those arid and semi-arid areas. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what this Motion intends today is to have wealth creation in those areas. Wealth creation can even start by looking at the infrastructure in those areas. During the pre-Independence days, drawing a map of Kenya was so simple. If you want to draw the map of Kenya, you just put a ruler across the map and track the Northern Frontier District (NFD). Those districts were forgotten. They were actually prohibited areas. You could not travel there. You needed a special permit to go there. Since that time, the subsequent Governments that followed never put in place the infrastructure in those areas. Opening up of roads could, as well, alleviate poverty. That will encourage economic activities across the border. Trade would flourish. But because of lack of roads and infrastructure in those areas, even traders do not venture into those areas. So, this Motion has come at the right time. Its implementation should have been yesterday, so that we could open up those areas. Over 10 million people live in those areas. That is a whole nation that is being forgotten. Time has come for us not to forget what our brethren are doing in those areas. We need to be there. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the water that is required in those areas - and I am glad that even Prof. Maathai has mentioned it--- Each year, thousands of tonnes of top soil in Kenya are washed away down the River Nile into the estuaries of Damietta and Rosetta in Egypt. If you have got the opportunity to visit the Damietta and Rosetta Dam estuaries in Egypt and you are August 29, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3537 shown the top soil that has come all the way from Kenya or East Africa, you will weep. The Egyptians scoop that soil. That is what they use to plant rice along the estuaries of River Nile. That is our own soil. It can be utilised in arid and semi-arid areas. The land in arid areas, as I have just said, need no fertilisers. It is in those areas too that we have tonnes and tonnes of mineral wealth underneath. It is surprising that the Kenya Government has not studied what is covered underneath those arid and semi-arid areas. How come that other parts of Africa, where the Great Rift Valley passes through, have that natural wealth, yet, in Kenya, it passes through and we do not have it? That is something that this Motion should take into account. We should introduce a Bill to develop the arid and semi-arid areas. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is rather disheartening that 40 years after Kenya attained Independence, we still talk about arid lands. There should be no arid or semi-arid land in Kenya at the moment. That is because Kenya, even in the World Bank statistics, is considered to be fully developed as per our per capita income. But we still behave like a chicken that is tied up in a market. After releasing the chicken, you need to give it a kick so that it can know that it is actually free. That way, it can start doing its own things. Kenya is not poor. It is the mismanagement of our economy. It is the mismanagement of our resources. We should have been there a long time ago. We should have developed those areas a long time ago. But the question of many Kenyans, particularly the top elite--- They think if it is theirs, it is theirs alone. If it is hon. Ahenda's, it is ours. That attitude must change. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}