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"id": 210070,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/210070/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Syongo",
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"id": 316,
"legal_name": "Zaddock Madiri Syong'oh",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to support this Motion. Energy is truly the engine for economic productivity and affects all sectors. It is also a major facilitator and catalyst for the improvement of our social welfare and education as has already been mentioned by some of my colleagues. The assimilation of Information Communications and Technology (ICT) throughout our country will very much depend on energy. So, access to it will help entertainment and welfare at the domestic level. I, therefore, want to commend this Ministry for doing a really good job. I must also take this opportunity to commend the technocrats in that Ministry. They have been sensitive and have, indeed, ensured that there is reasonable equity in the distribution of resources in the energy sector. I thank them and pray that they would continue to do so. We also need to record our gratitude to various contracts, first to the French and the Chinese which the Ministry mentioned that they are coming soon, as well as the Government's commitment to ensuring that all sections of the society get electricity. I have expressed my concerns before that there is a mismatch between the investment in electricity distribution and the investment in generation. This is an issue that we must take seriously. Even though the Minister has made some promises, if you look at the Budget, the Development Budget is far too small compared to the projected demand for power, especially electricity. Therefore, I would like to suggest that the Ministry of Finance does increase the allocation of the Development component of the Ministry's Budget in future. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one other solution is really to go private. I would like to suggest that there is opportunity to carry out feasibility studies on prospective generation projects so that we can market them to potential investors; both domestic and foreign investors as turn-key projects. I know that if we can do so, those portfolios - because the demand and profitability is guaranteed - we will be able to get serious investors. I remember when I led a Kenya Government delegation to the Bi-annual Consultative Meeting on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) with American Government, our report from Senegal clearly shows and gives details of the United States of America (USA) Government's commitment to help Kenya access investors in renewable energy. I know that an American company is installing a 550 megawatts solar generator in Romania. Why can we not access those opportunities. We can do so without necessarily straining our major resources as a nation. I want to urge the Ministry to reduce the demand pressure on the national grid. There are so many micro-generation facilities and technologies available. There is solar technology, wind generation technology and bio-fuel production technology which can be used to power small towns, markets, institutions and even domestic consumption of power. Through that, we would reduce the pressure on the national grid so that whatever is available through the national grid can then be used by industries and other commercial large-scale consumers of power. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the question of exploration of oil has been talked about. I know that the Minister has assured that there is concerted effort to explore for oil not just in the north eastern part of Kenya and the coastal region but I would like them to look outside the box and even go to western Kenya and everywhere else. Nobody expected that Western Uganda would yield oil. So, I do not see why western Kenya, Nyanza and so on cannot produce oil. Let us not wait for Trans Mara in Tanzania to produce oil for us to start rushing towards Migori which borders that area, to start exploring. We should encourage ourselves that even without striking oil, we should prime ourselves because we have a sophisticated economy, to do value addition to our neighbours. Since we have the KPC, there is no reason why we cannot target Sudanese and Ugandan oil, transport it to Mombasa for export, process and refine it for them. In 1983, when I was a student, I saw Singapore August 8, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3073 make huge sums of profits purely by refining oil which they imported from Malaysia and other places because they had the technology, and exporting the finished product. I want to assure you that they were probably making more money than those who were extracting oil in their own land. Let us also consider value addition in this particular sector."
}