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"id": 217171,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/217171/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Wambora",
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"speaker": {
"id": 285,
"legal_name": "Martin Nyaga Wambora",
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"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I wish to take this opportunity, from the outset to support the Budget Speech read by the Minister for Finance. It was a well-thought out Speech. It highlighted several very substantial achievements realised during the Kibaki Administration. The economic growth of 6.1 per cent last year, indicates the success of the economy and the success of the Government's pursuance of micro-economic policies. Mr. Speaker, Sir, it is clear that areas like hotel occupancy, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, transport and communication have performed exceptionally well. For the first time we have performed better than our neighbours; Tanzania and Uganda, who have been doing better than us. That shows that another five years of this administration will see unprecedented economic development. It will take us even nearer to the national vision of 2030. It also takes us nearer to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Mr. Speaker, Sir, I wish to touch on four sectoral priorities of this Budget which are close to my heart and I believe that it will make a difference in the development of this country. As I have done in the past, I want to start with the most important. That is infrastructure. I will start with the roads. Indeed, the 67 per cent increase in the Budget towards the rehabilitation of infrastructure and especially roads, is a very good indicator of where we are going. That is the right way to go because there is no country which can develop without quality infrastructure. So, I feel the Minister captured that very well. It was actually an increment of 46 per cent from Kshs2.5 billion to Kshs62.1 billion. Despite the increased allocation in the Budget for road construction we still have to face some challenges. I can identify three of them. One of them is the central tendering procedure and a lot of red-tape. Giving of tenders for roads still continues to take a very long time, especially the donor- funded projects. The Ministry has to do something about this. Secondly, we are not June 26, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2019 experiencing much private sector participation in the construction of roads, despite the Minister's promise during last year's Budget that the Government will concession several roads. To date, that has not happened. That is why we have slowed down in this field. That should now take place. We need to see concessioning of roads and infrastructure long-term bonds floated in the stock exchange so that the ceding of road construction can move faster. Thirdly, there is a challenge of poor maintenance and rehabilitation of roads. Here, we cannot even compare ourselves with our neighbour, Tanzania which is less endowed. From the time Tanzania came up with a roads authority to look at roads construction, that is when they left us very far behind in terms of road maintenance. We should not even try to re-invent the wheel. All we have to do is just copy what Tanzania is doing in terms of repairing the roads. The worst example is the road from the airport to the town centre. It was repaired in a very poor way by just sealing the potholes. The road became very uncomfortable and yet it is supposed to be our showcase road. I would urge the Minister to do to Mombasa Road what he is doing on Thika Road where the maintenance of the road involves scraping everything and resealing afresh. That is how all the roads in Kenya should be repaired and maintained and we shall have better roads. Mr. Speaker, Sir, let me move on to the second infrastructural sub-sector; that is the energy sub-sector. This is a sector which has performed very well in the last one year. Indeed, exceptionally well. They seem to be meeting their target of 120,000 new clients for electricity. I appeal to the Minister for Energy to keep it up and maintain that pace. But something must be done in that sector. KenGen must now go full thrust to ensure that they make use of our water resources; the water falls. We have so many water falls in the country. Even in my constituency, Runyenjes, there are several water falls. There are about four or five water falls which KenGen can make use of. I will approach the Managing Director of KenGen so that I can take engineers on a trip to my constituency to ensure that this potential in my constituency is utilised. I am already exploiting one using the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). I would like assistance as well, on the other three. The other sub-sector is Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Again, I wish to commend the Government and Minister for Information and Communications for a job well- done. I think the national fibre optic network is coming up very well. The East African Marine Systems Project is also commendable and it should be speeded up. But in this sub-sector, what we were promised last year was not done, that is, the sale of shares of Safaricom Limited as well as those of Telkom Kenya Limited. We hope we shall see the sale of the shares of these two companies, so that the private sector can accelerate development in that sub-sector. The second sub-sectoral priority area is the human capital development. Here, I am talking about health care services, where there is a budgetary increase. But the challenge in this sub-sector is the need for the Minister for Health to make use of those projects that have been constructed through the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF), especially dispensaries and health centres. Quite a number of them have not been taken over by the Ministry, and it is really a pity because we are denying people satisfaction of their basic requirement. The other priority in the human capital development is education, which, I think, is doing exceptionally well. With a budget of Kshs119 billion, I think the sky is the limit. We are happy with the free primary education and free tuition in secondary schools, starting from January. We are also happy with the maintenance of the bursary fund and increment of the number of teachers. But, again, I wish to appeal to the Minister for Education to ensure that in addition to free tuition in secondary schools, free books are provided to the students, especially, those from the poor families. The Ministry should also fund the selected centres of excellence. A year ago, we were told to select two centres of excellence in every district, and we did so. However, nothing has been done to develop them in terms of education. The other priority sectors are agriculture and rural development, where the budget has gone up from Kshs24.9 billion to Kshs29.8 billion. This 2020 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 26, 2007 emphasis is in the right place, but we remain with three challenges in this sector. One of the challenges is value-addition. We need value-addition incentives to ensure that the private sector and farmers can do value-addition to their products for export, so that they can get better proceeds for their produce. Kenya mostly relies on rain-farming as opposed to irrigation-farming. Irrigation farming is very limited in Kenya and, yet, this is what the agriculture sector should encourage, so that we can do farming all-year-round. The other challenge is in the area of the administration of the Coffee Development Fund. The farmers are not making use of this Fund because the interest rates are very high and the repayment period is very short. So, I wish to ask the Government to consider lowering the interest rate, so that the farmers can borrow money from the Coffee Development Fund. It should also increase the lending period in order to make it easy for the farmers to utilize this Fund and repay the money comfortably. Finally, I wish to touch on two areas which I think are very important; these are, the women and youth. The Government has allocated Kshs2 billion in the coming financial year for the Women Enterprise Development Fund and Kshs1 billion for the Youth Enterprise Development Fund, which was availed in this Financial Year. I hope the Government will implement these funds and allocate more money to them. I beg to support the Motion."
}