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"speaker_name": "Mr. Syongo",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me a chance to contribute in support of the Vote of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The primary function of any mission or diplomat abroad is firstly to represent the Head of State or sovereign state of the country that he or she represents and there is little misunderstanding on this. The second most important role of these missions is the ensuring of the welfare and safety of Kenyans abroad. On this, I would like to join my colleagues in saying that, whereas a few of our ambassadors and High Commissioners are doing a good job in terms of their mind-set and readiness to perform their duties in this particular area, a lot more ought to be done. Presently, just as His Excellency the Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs was emphasizing in this contribution, there are over 100,000 Kenyans abroad. The figure that I have is actually more than that. I am told that about 54 per cent of all students who are studying abroad from Sub-saharan Africa come from Kenya. There is a significant number of the student community abroad. I want to challenge the Minister for Foreign Affairs who is absent at the moment; but I can see his officers are in the Chamber; there is minimal interaction and engagement between our embassies, students and other Kenyans abroad. If there is anything that has been an embarrassment to Kenyans abroad, it is that lacklustre attitude. The High Commissioners, Ambassadors and their officers, in majority of cases, are laid-back. Even now, if I ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs to confirm if any of our embassies abroad has a complete inventory of Kenyan students in their countries of jurisdiction, he will say that they do not have it. As a result, many times Kenyans are bullied and beaten up, yet, we have embassies in these countries. Only recently, we saw a sad case of Kenyans being killed in the USA. I know that it is not possible to prevent crime just because one is an ambassador, but the attitude and particularly, the lacklustre attitude that some of our officers have is a major worry. Mr. Temporary Deputy Sepaker, Sir, one of my colleagues did point out here an example of who used to be in South Africa. That was probably one of the most embarrassing posting that this country has ever had for a long time. As a Member of the Pan-African Parliament, I travel many times to Johannesburg and for other missions. Even our retired President gave a speech which many Kenyans in South Africa just saw on television. Nobody knew that he was visiting South Africa. Even as we continue to perform our duties in the Pan African Parliament, other ambassadors and High Commissioners engage their visiting Members of Parliament. However, nothing of that sort happens between the Kenyan Members of Parliament and the mission which is in South Africa. I do not blame the officers, but the leadership in that Embassy was most wanting. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said that, I want to pay tribute gratitude to Ambassador Kathurima. As the then Assistant Minister in charge of trade and investments, I engaged with that officer in India. I know that even in Germany, where I believe he is now, he is doing a good job. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when you consider the performance of our officers abroad, you can see that there is lack of standards. People perform differently because there has not August 29, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3579 been any consistent training of our officers. I support the idea of making our diplomats career diplomats through training. As a student at the University of Nairobi (UoN), I knew that there was a school of diplomacy just next to the university. What happened to that school? To the best of my knowledge, it was becoming a focal point for training diplomats for the entire Africa, if not the Third World. What happened to that institute? Should we not resuscitate it? Should we not upgrade it to a post graduate school in diplomacy, so that we can train our ambassadors and mission officers working in our embassies abroad? We should also train our officers in the area of negotiation on trade and investments. The whole area of arbitration at international fora is so important that we should give those skills to as many of our officers as we can. Negotiation is a science. We need to train our officers and develop a proper curriculum. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also need to train our officers on etiquette. Many times, when we go out there and interact with our officers, we get embarrassed. The conduct of some of our officers is despicable. They have no table manners and some are badly dressed! Their dress codes are completely out of tune with the occasion. I want to challenge the Minister for Foreign Affairs to clean them up! Piga brush kabisa, so that we can have a standard image for our country. When our officers go outside there, they should know the colour of a tie must go with a certain suit and shirt. These things may look small, but they are very important. When those officers are out there, they are the image of this country. It is important that they portray the right image for this great lion of Africa. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the question of performance contracts, there has to be some criteria of assessing our embassies in terms of performance. There should also be a criteria for saying: \"We should have an embassy in this country, and not in this other country.\" The most important thing for us to appreciate is that, whereas political diplomacy is very important and those diplomats represent the Head of State when they are out there; but trade, investment and the generation of investment in those countries where they are serving, so that this flows backwards into our country, is a critical criteria. At one stage, when I served briefly as the Assistant Minister in charge of Trade and Investments we, in fact, engaged the Minister for Foreign Affairs, so that we could set standards. We have statistics on trade and investment movements. Let us have this as a standard procedure, so that we give every ambassador or High Commissioner targets. We should tell them: \"These are your targets. We want you to sell so many tonnes of coffee.\" That is, of course, dependant on the market needs or the unique characteristics of the countries to where they are posted. If we do that, at end of the day, we can justify their expenses. This Ministry is one of the few that can actually maintain itself. If we gave them a percentage of the amount of trade or exports to otheir countries--- We can tell them to keep a certain percentage. For example, if we gave them a percentage based on the number of tourists visiting our country from the countries where they are serving, we would be able to fund the operations of our foreign missions without necessarily digging too deeply into our Exchequer. That money would be released for other development activities. I, therefore, would like to encourage the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to really consider that as business. I liked the contribution by the Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs because that is really the way we should be moving. My fear is that these things are said and not always done. We need to codify them into some kind of document, which is then used to train and ensure that we capture and store memories for the generations of officers to come. That is really critical. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to finalise by emphasising one particular thing. We have very many Kenyan students abroad. In many cases, those students are like orphans abroad. If you look at Tanzania - I interact a lot with Tanzanians by virtue of where I come from - the High Commissioners and Ambassadors from Tanzania are very keen to know the whereabouts and the welfare of Tanzanian students in their countries. This is not happening in our country. 3580 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES August 29, 2007 Without parents being nearby, some of those students suffer from small things which, only need communication and a little helping hand from the embassies and missions to make a big difference in the welfare of those students, including the renewal of their visas. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those remarks, I beg to support."
}