HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 229676,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/229676/?format=api",
"text_counter": 106,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kajwang",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 164,
"legal_name": "Gerald Otieno Kajwang",
"slug": "otieno-kajwang"
},
"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I want to give my contribution regarding the Speech that was made by the President yesterday. I want to start by commenting on what the President opened with. He said the following: \"The laws we have passed and enacted in the past four years form the basis on which Kenyans can realise the dream of a well-governed country that is prosperous, just and equitable.\" He called it a dream and a good dream. But are we working towards achieving that dream? That is the question. Are we working towards achieving a prosperous nation, a just and equitable society? Since he said many things, I will only point at just a few things that he referred to and I will show that we are not working towards achieving that dream as hard as we should. First, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me also say that 200 judges cannot be appointed in this country without a constitutional amendment to rearrange the Judicial Service Commission. Without a proper rearrangement and reconstitution of the Judicial Service Commission, we are 34 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 21, 2007 likely to continue to ethnicise our benches in this country as we have done before. Secondly, we cannot elect mayors and chairmen of county councils directly unless we are going to give them executive powers, and that is a function of a new constitutional arrangement both in the cities, county councils and municipalities. You cannot subject an individual to an election of 3 million Kenyans in Nairobi and then run the city through Ministerial directives. When London went that way, the Mayor was given executive powers. I want to thank the President for having spoken about fisheries in this country for the first time. It is a forgotten sector of our economy. However, this is what he said about it: \"The sector employs 60,000 people directly.\" Apart from agriculture, there is no other sector that contributes that kind of direct employment. He further said that it employs 600,000 Kenyans indirectly. There is no other industry like that. Even if you were to manufacture cars in Kenya, you would not even be able to employ 3,000 people. If you really want to help Kenyans and you identify a sector, like fisheries, which employs 60,000 people directly and 600,000 indirectly, you should invest in it. However, what has the Government done? This is what the President said: We have provided electricity so that there are cold storage in 20 beaches in the whole of Lake Victoria. On the Kenyan side, we have more than 200 landing beaches. The President announced from that Chair that they have provided electricity to 20 landing beaches and he did not mention any other investment in this sector that employs 60,000 people directly and 600,000 indirectly. If I were in the President's shoes and wanted to invest in it, I would provide credit facilities to the fishermen to buy fishing gear and ensure that there is security in the lake. We have left our Kenyan borders with Uganda and Tanzania to be manned unpoliced, and our fishermen, who invest between Kshs1 million to Kshs2 million in their boats and fishnets, lose them every other day and nobody bothers. If, for example, you lose an investment of Kshs2 million by fire in Nairobi, I am sure it will be a national issue. When you lose fishing equipment to Ugandan or Tanzanian pirates, it is not a problem because it is far in the lake. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, His Excellency the President talked about the milk sub-sector, the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) - of course, that is the livestock sector - and the coffee sector. However, he did not talk about the sugar industry. The sugar industry employs a large number of unskilled labour in this country. It is a simple investment. We merely need to invest some money in increasing the crashing capacity of our industries and we will employ three to four times the number of people who are employed now. It does not take more than Kshs2 billion to do that. If we did that, we would employ more people. We would not be wasting foreign exchange to import sugar in this country. Maybe, it is politically-correct to destroy the sugar industry so that we can import cheap sugar and make money out of it. Of course, that is for the politically-correct. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, His Excellency the President also talked about education. He emphasised the issue of day schools. In my constituency, we have identified that because we are too poor to afford boarding schools. However, after we invest so much money to develop day schools, there are no teachers. I have put up ten day schools in my constituency in the last four years. Each one of them is lucky to have two teachers from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC). Why does the Government put our children through an education system which it recommends to be good, but fails to give us teachers? Where do we get the money to pay those teachers? We talk about the Free Primary Education Programme (FPEP). I have visited primary schools in my constituency and discovered that most of them with eight classes have three, four or five teachers. Nobody seems to talk about that issue. The Minister for Education seems to be happy about that. What is the essence of the FPEP when we have three, four or five teachers for eight classes? Many people in some of our constituencies are infected and affected by the HIV/AIDS scourge more than in some other areas of this country. I do not know why that is the case. But many of those three, four or five teachers are also sick and the Ministry is not bothered about that. March 21, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 35 Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, His Excellency the President also talked about something that needs to be done in this country, which is very good. He talked about day streams in boarding schools. We have developed boarding schools which have a bigger capacity of teachers and learning materials. However, boarding schools have refused to allow day streams because they claim that day-streamers will bring indiscipline. I want a circular from the Minister for Education from tomorrow indicating that from next year, all day schools should allow, at least, one day stream from Form I to Form IV. If we do that, we will develop this country a little bit. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organisation (MYWO) is not an organ of management or governance in this country. We will not allow it in the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). There is already a provision for gender in the CDF. The MYWO is an organ which is influenced and partisan. It is not an organ of the Government. Until we are told why the women who have been included in the CDF are not adequate for gender balance, we will not allow it. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, before my time runs out, there is something which His Excellency the President said and which, if it ever happens, will be very good for this country. He said that the business confidence in Kenya is at an all time high, both for local and foreign investors. About three days ago, a foreign investor in the communication industry was unable to pay Kshs12 billion to our economy for a licence because they were forced by a law which says that 30 per cent of the shares must be off-loaded to local investors. There is no local investor who had the Kshs3.6 billion or more. However, they were told that, unless they find a local investor who can buy the 30 per cent shares, they cannot invest in Kenya. What are we trying to say? We are trying to invite people to invest in our country, but we are also putting in place laws to deny them a chance to invest. We were waiting for our young people to get jobs when that investor rolled out! Now, those jobs have gone! Where will we get them from? We must be serious on the direction that we want to take. We must remove that law and allow anybody who wants to invest to do so. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we will also allow anybody who wants to dis-invest to do so, anybody who wants to grow to do so and anybody who wants to collapse to do so, so that this economy can grow. Those laws are not helpful. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, lastly, last year, the Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) closed down Charterhouse Bank. The Minister said in this House that he reluctantly closed that bank because it was strong in capital, management and profits. Why has it not been re-opened?"
}