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"id": 234843,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Dahir",
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"speaker": {
"id": 259,
"legal_name": "Dahir Sheikh Abdullahi",
"slug": "dahir-abdullahi"
},
"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this important Bill. Right from the outset, I would like to say that I support this Bill. Indeed, it is long overdue. We ought to have brought it before this House a long time ago for debate. By now we should have enacted this Bill into law. As a Member of Parliament for Lagdera where Dadaab Refugee Camp is situated, we host over 160,000 refugees. Today I stand here not really a happy man, but with a heavy heart. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to start by thanking His Excellency the President because, a few years ago, when he toured the northern part of Kenya, we were able to articulate and discuss our problems with him as far as refugees are concerned. Within few months, the President constituted the Ministry of State for Immigration and Registration which is completely independent from the Office of the President. He has made this Ministry autonomous and we are happy about that. We want that Ministry to remain as it is; that is, autonomous. We have had a lot of problems including environmental degradation, culture clash and so on. Our Government is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions. As members of the host communities, we were not consulted, but it is our Government which was signatory to the Geneva Conventions and we have no alternative. However, in hosting refugee families, I am unhappy to say that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and other United Nations (UN) agencies were not able to reciprocate our hospitality. We hosted over 500,000 refugees at one time. Right now, we have about 160,000 refugees and we are faced with the problem of environmental degradation to the extent that for one to fetch firewood, one needs to go as far as the interiors of Wajir District. You cannot find firewood within Garissa District. We want the UNHCR to start a massive tree planting exercise in this area so as to compensate for the trees that they have been using to burn charcoal. With regard to education, there are so many things that have gone wrong in Dadaab. When refugees come, they get better education than the locals. They are being hospitalised. We, the indigenous people, lack the facilities that they have in hospitals. It is like the refugees are our bosses and the locals are poor. Everyone there would want to be a refugee in his own country because of this preferential treatment. Most of my people have even moved to the camps and registered there as refugees. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, initially, as Kenyans, we had the right to be issued November 14, 1006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3637 with identity cards, going to school and college but that is no longer the case. That particular area has been made a refugee centre. As a Member of Parliament, if I stand there and say that I am from Dadaab, the first thing somebody will think is that I am a refugee. You will find a lady who was born there, schooled and married there with five children but does not have an identity card simply because she is from Dadaab Town or from a refugee area. The refugees are living better lives to the extent that instead of them being repatriated back to their countries, they are instead being given a better option of going to another country. I spoke to the Education Officer in Dadaab recently and he told me that the education level has deteriorated because the students do not concentrate in their studies in order to pass their exams but they just want to go to the United States (US) as refugees because that is a better option. It is a serious problem which needs to be addressed. First of all, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and other United Nations (UN) agencies there are not employing the indigenous people leave alone giving them contracts as hon. Wetangula said. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are disturbed by this issue and we want the Minister to take it seriously and ensure that the locals in that area who have hosted these people for years and years are offered jobs. Even for unskilled jobs like drivers, clerks and storekeepers, they go very far and recruit foreigners when they can easily get the locals in Dadaab."
}