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{
    "id": 206795,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/206795/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 111,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ms. Abdalla",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 245,
        "legal_name": "Abdallah Jumaa Ngozi",
        "slug": "abdallah-ngozi"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the truth of the matter is that there is no woman senior enough to be able to sit there. We miss out on international postings because Kenyans tend to propose mainly men. In fact, in some cases, it is men who have already retired and spent a lot of time in the foreign service. Some of the countries where we have very serious economic interests are led by people who were ambassadors in the 1960s before some of us were even born. When will people of my generation be given the chance to represent Kenya in those major economic interest countries? If we do not move into that area, we will not have that age where our ambassadors will really perform what we need them to do in those Ministries. We do not want to see friends being pushed into positions that they do not deliver back to us, as a country. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also have been saying that we are strengthening Kenya's foreign missions relationships with the diaspora. One of the areas that I have noticed the existence of this relationship is that we always have this agenda of them supporting the Government and investments back home. One of the problems that a lot of Kenyans or people from this region experience is that of coming back. When non-Kenyans are leaving, for example, the West, let us say Somalis and Ethiopians and they want to come back home and pass through Kenya and some of them do not have proper travel documents---- One of the things I have noticed is that we, as a country, are losing a lot of visa-related money from non-Kenyans who are from our region who travel on what the West call travel documents. For example, if you are a Somali refugee and you have been living in England and you get a travel document, the Kenyan embassy in the UK will not give you a visa, but lo behold the Ugandan Embassy would give you the same. So what you will need to do is to walk past the Busia border, get back to Kenya and pay no visa fees to get into this country. So, when we are looking for tourists all over the place, be they having travel documents or proper documents, no person with a travel document from the UK would want to languish in Kenya where he will not get an identification card, especially if he looks like me. This is because he will not ever get citizenship. So, I want the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to review that ban about giving visas to people holding travel documents because we are losing a lot of money to Uganda. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, as you are aware, our Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs is not around. So, I will be urging the Minister to try and make sure that he lets us know that his Ministry is not being guillotined, so that we are more prepared. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}