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"id": 212055,
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"speaker_name": "Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o",
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"legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the plan that the Minister for Roads and Public Works had when we entered the Government - when Mr. Raila was the Minister - was to build 150,000 houses for lower income groups in this country. That would have created tremendous jobs for quantity surveyors, civil engineers, masons, carpenters and so on. Many jobs would have been created if the idea of building 150,000 low-income houses in this country was carried out. We know there is demand for housing. But the contrary has happened. The private sector is building houses for very high-income groups. You can see what is happening in Kilimani, Kileleshwa and so on. That is because there are lower interest rates in banks and mortgages. There is tremendous speculation with real estate at the moment. At the rate things are going, we may soon have the Malaysian Babel here, and real estate industry will come tumbling down. What we need to do is go back to the original premise, that the Government should invest heavily in public works as a way of creating jobs for the people. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, secondly, to stimulate the private sector to create jobs for people, what should happen in the Government is that all those bureaucratic bottle-necks that inhibit the private sector from investing more in this country, should be removed. I just do not mean bottle-necks affecting foreign enterprises or investors; I mean bottle-necks affecting indigenous investors, beginning with the farmers in the countryside, to small and medium enterprises. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I speak now, I witnessed an extremely sad event this morning, where the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) specialises in harassing the private sector for purely political reasons. It is that private sector, particularly the small and medium enterprises, which we expect to create jobs for our people. But KACC specialises in harassing them purely for political reasons. If the small and medium enterprises begin closing down because KACC and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) are harassing them, how will we create jobs? That was a very simple issue of a consulting firm which used to work for us when I was the Minister in the Ministry of Planning and National Development, when we were creating the same Economic Recovery Strategy Paper. His Excellency the President was due to launch that Paper in three days, and it had to be prepared for printing by the Government Printer. Somebody had to do that. In three days, it was not possible to go through the whole rigmarole of Government procedure, which makes it very difficult for the private sector to do business in this country. The Permanent Secretary had to make a decision and ask: \"Who can do this work for us in three days, so that we can take it to the Government Printer to produce it for His Excellency the President to launch it at the Grand Regency Hotel?\" The firm which did a marvellous job was eventually not paid by the Government. It has not been paid even now! Rather than KACC going to ask the relevant accounting officers in the Ministry of Planning and National Development to find out why 24 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 25, 2007 those people were not paid, they are harassing that firm for having received a job un-procedurally. Apparently, the competitive process that was to be followed was not followed. I was the Minister then and we could not use that method in three days and produce the work that was to be done. Indeed, the Permanent Secretary made a very sane decision to make sure that the work was done, so that it could be launched. The Economic Recovery Strategy Paper is the basis of all the successes in the Government today. Rather than KACC appreciating what we did, they are harassing that firm because they believe I am connected to it. That is purely political! That is going on everywhere. I have received so many people from the private sector who are being harassed either by KRA or KACC, for purely political reasons. If KACC could go after the \"big fish\" such as the ones who were involved in Anglo Leasing, cowboy contractors and bring back that money here, it could invest it in public works and create jobs. Indeed, when we come into the Government, we will abolish KACC. Actually, it is a useless outfit! The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) can do a better job. Indeed, we have people who are trained for tracing crimes at the CID, who can do a much better job than this entity which is just being used for political reasons. I do not understand why the Director of KACC should earn so much money. That money should be given to the private sector to employ people. There is a lot that can be tidied up in Government to create jobs, rather than this New Deal that Mr. Angwenyi is proposing. I can understand Mr. Angwenyi's intentions, but I do not think it will help us have another bureaucratic procedure to create jobs. I believe, as we said in the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation, that the way to create jobs is lessen the burden of the private sector in paying taxes, broaden the tax rates and lower the tax rates. The money released will be used by the private sector to invest. But if we are taxing the private sector as if we are milking a Zebu cow to death, then we will not have the revenue to invest in the private sector for purposes of job creation. There are two things. We should remove the bottle- necks in the Government that terrorise the private sector, reduce the tax rates and broaden the tax base so that more money could be available to the private sector. The private sector includes all of us who have some money to invest in our economy as individuals. If people were not taxed so heavily, they would invest a lot of money in treasury bonds and all kinds of bonds. If the Government, for example, introduced a road construction bond where people know that their money is safe and they can get good returns in 10 or 20 years, that will be a tremendous source of domestic savings to build a dual carriage way from Mombasa to Busia, and open our borders to Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We need that! Then, we can construct roads to Ethiopia because we need to reach our neighbours. We could construct a dual carriage way to Arusha, so that we can trade better with Tanzania. These are the things which will create jobs, not any other kind of bureaucratic outfit. The last time this kind of arrangement was done, was in the early 1960s when the late Tom Mboya was the Minister for Planning and National Development. There was a tripartite arrangement between the Government and the private sector to employ people. Eventually, that could never be repeated. It could only happen at that point in time when the private sector was very young in this country and the public sector was growing. Now, the Civil Service has grown to its maximum. The challenge facing the Government is how to reduce it. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my submission is that let us look at the issues spelt out in the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation (ERS) which we said were trying to inhibit private sector growth in this country. Implement those proposals because they are still valid. Do not introduce new ones because these are already in paper and then we can see the results. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, another thing we said in that ERS was that one of the pillars of economic recovery is the rehabilitation of physical infrastructure as a great source of July 25, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 25 employment creation. As I stand here today, the physical infrastructure has not fully been rehabilitated. West of the Rift Valley has no roads. If money could be put by the Government to rehabilitate the physical infrastructure west of the Rift, we would create a lot of jobs. The so called Roads 2000 Programme which was meant to employ people, so that they maintain roads on a regular basis, could create a lot of jobs. It happened in the 1970s and can happen again today. So, we have things on paper which can create jobs. All we need is to implement them and not to create any new bureaucracies as the hon. Member is suggesting. Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir."
}