HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 206414,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/206414/?format=api",
"text_counter": 138,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 193,
"legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
"slug": "peter-nyongo"
},
"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to second this Motion and say that it is very unfortunate that over 40 years after Independence we still have such discriminatory laws like the Energy Act which is there to impede private sector development. Any law, in this day and age, that gives monopoly to any company, be it in the private or public sector, is obviously against development. We have a Law Reform Commission in this country which has been more busy reforming laws that are ineffectual rather than those that can speed up development. I would urge that the Law Reform Commission listens very carefully to what is being said in this House and takes this as a matter of urgency. It should come together with Members of Parliament to expunge such outdated laws from our law books. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, electricity, as Prof. Olweny has said today, is an important measure of development. Any country which energy consumption per capita falls below a certain level, definitely is not serious about development. If I could give you certain facts, you will realise that this Motion is extremely important in ensuring that energy production and consumption in this country must go up and energy must be cheap, not just for industrial use but for domestic consumption as well. You realise that only 15 per cent of the population in this country has access to electric power. This is far below the average access rate of 32 per cent for developing countries. In other words, we are half the average of developing countries. Here in Africa, 67 per cent of South Africans have access to electricity. The figure has gone up to 75 per cent by this year since these figures were given in 2002. In Ghana, 45 per cent has access to electricity. In Zambia, 42 per cent has access to electricity and yet, we pride ourselves as being more developed than Zambians. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the reasons why our people do not have access to electricity is because we are a high energy cost country. The reasons for this are, one, the rather monopolistic tendency of our energy production and the sale that the Energy Act has been imposed on us for so many years. Secondly, is the corruption that has underpinned the development of the energy sector in this country. There is no God-given reason that we should have these diesel- powered generators; Kipevu I and Kipevu II which sell their electricity to KPLC at 14 US cents per unit as opposed to 8 US cents. This was because some people who were gurus in the energy sector found it necessary to double both as State bureaucrats and as so-called investors in Independent Power Production (IPP), so as to sell this energy at double the price that it should have been sold to the Kenyan Government. Kenya has a high cost of electricity estimated today at 8 US cents per kilowatt hour. Yet the Kipevu I and Kipevu II were selling them at US 14 cents per kilowatt hour. Just imagine how much we have been losing in that regard. Uganda sells their electricity at 4 US cents per kilowatt hour. Malawi sells electricity at 2.5 US cents per kilowatt hour. Egypt sells electricity at 2.8 US cents and Zambia at 2.3 US cents. In other words, we are actually penalising our consumers, both industrial and domestic sectors for provision of energy. We know very well that we can reduce this high cost by producing August 29, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3547 the energy cheaply. This Motion is extremely important because it will help us reduce the cost of producing energy in this country apart from the other reasons that Prof. Olweny has said today. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at the energy sector today it has got potential of contributing to the gross domestic product at a much higher level than it is doing today. It is common knowledge that if you want your business to grow, it is better to produce 1,000 products that you will sell to the market at Kshs50 than 100 products that you will sell to the market at Kshs100. The former, by reducing the cost per unit will realise a much bigger volume business turnout than the later. So, were we to begin co-generation, the amount of energy that would go to the national grid would be bigger and cheaper using much more people. In the final analysis, the energy sector will make much more money than it is doing today. This means that it will contribute to a higher degree to the Gross Domestic Product than it is doing today. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the things that we must realise in this country is that we have been endangering our environment. The reliance on one, wood fuel as a source of energy production has depleted our forests. Consequently, when the forests are depleted, water availability and production is also affected. So, we are fast becoming a water-deficient nation. We can deal with this water-deficiency by checking on cutting down of our forests to provide energy. One of the easiest ways of stopping the cutting down of our forests to provide energy is to go for co-generation. In co-generation you are doing two things. One, you are using a by-product that already exists at no cost to you. You are then turning that by-product into energy that will produce more sugar for you at no cost to you. The excess energy that is produced in those factories is then released to the national grid at a much more lower unit cost than is available in other ways of producing energy. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is such a simple, obvious and beneficial thing that there would be a completely idiotic nation not to implement it immediately. Once you do that, you open yourself to establishing many more lines of industrial activity in the sugar sector. One of them is to use that energy for a wood making sector in the sugar industry. If you visit a country like Cuba, you will realise that sugar is used not just for producing energy for energy use there, but it is used for producing seven other products. One of them is, of course, wood from bagasse. The other one is perfumes from sugar itself. Another one are vaccines. A fourth one is alcohol both for industrial and domestic use. A sixth one is energy and the last one is fertiliser. So, if you look at our own sugar industry, we produce only one thing which is table sugar. We used to produce industrial sugar at Miwani until it was closed down because of corruption. These are the only two things that we have been looking at for over 40 years. Were we to be a little bit more broad minded and go into co-generation, it would open our minds and sights to these other seven lines of industrial production from sugar that will make our sugar industry contribute in a much bigger way to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is a Motion that is not only long overdue, but should be given immediate attention by the Government. I would believe that in the process of law reform, the reforming of the Energy Act should have come in a long time ago. However, I do believe that investing in the sugar industry by the Government is also very urgent. I am a sugar farmer. Today as I speak, one of the things that is happening in the sugar industry is that those industries are extremely insensitive to the needs of the farmer. For example, there are varieties of cane which should be harvested at 14 months. You are lucky if those varieties of cane are harvested at 24 months, by which time their sugar content is so low, that they cannot be beneficial to the farmer. Secondly, Cuba, which is a very small island, has about 27 sugar factories. They have now reduced them to 14 because they are down-sizing. Kenya, a much bigger country, has only about six or seven sugar factories and we think we have many. We should pay much more attention to the sugar industry because it is the backbone of industrialisation in this country. However, we do not 3548 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES August 29, 2007 realise it precisely because we have been so narrow minded about that industry to this very day that we have not undertaken the kind of reforms that are necessary to improve the lives of the farmers as well as to add more value to our industrialisation and economic development of our country. I beg to second."
}