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"id": 229705,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/229705/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Muriungi",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Tourism and Wildlife",
"speaker": {
"id": 270,
"legal_name": "Raphael Muriungi",
"slug": "raphael-muriungi"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this debate on the Address by our statesman. It will take a pretender, or a very malicious person, not to appreciate the contents of that great Address. I will touch on a few things that came out of that Address. One of them concerns the proposed Women Enterprise Development Fund. It has been said that educating a woman is like educating a nation. It can equally be said that empowering a woman economically is like empowering a nation. Most of the households in this country are headed by women, not necessarily because the women are widows but because of the lifestyle of men, who are not bothered with what happens at home. Therefore, when money is allocated to this Fund, it will be useful enough, because it will mean this Fund will ensure that food is placed on the tables of all Kenyans. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we talk of even the Youth Enterprise Development Fund itself, the part of that Fund that will go to females is likely to be spent in a better way because the womenfolk are known to go directly home from their work places, and they will never forget to March 21, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 57 carry home a loaf of bread. So, I commend highly the introduction of the Women Enterprise Development Fund; it is a very great idea. The other issue I would like to mention is that of recruitment for jobs. This is an issue which many people might not have realised. This Government has provided more than the 500,000 jobs per year as it promised. I will show you why this is true. If we take the CDF projects, many people are employed to put up many classrooms or day secondary schools that we are all boasting about, health centres, opening up of new roads and so on. This means that young women and men in the constituencies have a lot of employment opportunities. So, this is money which has gone to the grassroots and which never reached there before. A look at the newspapers these days will show that even the Public Service Commission is recruiting daily. It is a factor which we must emphasise and make the whole world see. Today, for instance, there is a list of 500 young men and women who have been given jobs in the National Youth Service. These ones have ready jobs, and I have evidence of people who finished their training in the National Youth Service and are currently employed. There was a young lady who was doing attachment in my office, and by November she was employed. So, \"tarmacking\" is not necessarily being suffered by everybody. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, still on the issue of employment, I would like to tie it up with that of education. It would be very important to ensure that new teachers are employed, not just the usual 8,000, who are employed annually to replace those who have died, retired or left the service for one reason or another. It is important to allocate more funds for the employment of teachers, because expansion of education will never be a loss. Even if we have to spend half of the Budget on education, we will produce people who are employable even outside Kenya. It is on record that since this Government took over power, a lot of money has been coming from our brothers and sisters in the diaspora, because the environment in Kenya is now conducive and the economy has been revived. Therefore, a lot of money is coming into the country, and for this reason, we should continue encouraging provision of education. After we educate our children, we should let them go to Sudan, America, Somalia and other countries. This also calls for the consideration of the dual citizenship that we have been talking about over the years. This is the only way we will enable Kenyans out there to bring in their money. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the issue of security, it is the only element I could say has been a bit of a bother to us. It is giving the country a bad name. There are many cases of insecurity because there are many guns in the wrong hands. The aim of anybody holding an unlicensed gun is to kill. Therefore, I totally agree that those people found with unlicensed guns should be given the severest punishment possible. We should not be lenient with criminals. I am surprised to hear some people defending gangsters who have terrorised the whole country. Some of them have even gunned down police officers. However, when they are gunned down, some of us condemn our officers for not immobilising those criminals. What will you do if you encounter armed criminals? I am sure most of us will do anything possible to save our lives. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to thank the President for addressing the issue of the Judiciary in this country. However, in my opinion, increasing the number of judges would not be enough. We need to come up with regulations to ensure that the Judiciary dispenses off cases within a certain given duration. We all know that courts are letting down this country. We hear of a case which is very well known to every Kenyan, but it drags on for many years before it is dispensed off. I wonder why known criminals are allowed to go scot-free just because the judges hide themselves behind the law. We might say whatever we can about the law, but it should not be an excuse for us to allow criminals roam freely on our streets. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to talk about discipline in public service. We all know that in the past some sectors of our economy had failed us. However, discipline has been instilled in our public servants through service contracts. Civil 58 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 21, 2007 servants have set targets which they must achieve."
}