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"id": 237268,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/237268/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Kibunguchy",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Health",
"speaker": {
"id": 294,
"legal_name": "Enoch Wamalwa Kibunguchy",
"slug": "enoch-kibunguchy"
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"content": "If you go to places like Western, Nyanza and Central provinces, you will find people living on small uneconomical pieces of land. This is happening yet we have a lot of land in this country. All we have to do is make sure we have good roads and provide water along the roads in the northern part of this country. We can also provide facilities like schools, health centres, shops and others. If all these facilities are provided this area will become attractive for settlement by many communities. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like the corporate bodies in this country to come up and do much more than the small things they have been doing here and there. It is Kenyans' money that makes it possible for Safaricom Limited to make a profit of over Kshs10 billion! The BAT story will be for another day. However, we would like to ask these companies, that have raked in billions of shillings in profit, to plough part of their money back to the society. We can then ask the Minister to tax exempt them. They can then do much more. I would have loved to see a lot more done by the corporate world. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my third point is on the issue of low-cost housing. I know that when His Excellency the President was launching the Vision 2030 for this country, there was pomp and optimism. However, we have to start somewhere. The other day, I was excited to read in the newspapers that money from the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) will be used to put up low-cost houses. We need to do much more! 3352 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 1, 2006 I think the issue of slums and slum upgrading should move from the realm of discussion to that of reality. Things should start happening on the ground. We cannot be proud of the way the majority of our people live. Funds should be found, either through issuance of long-term bonds or through other means, to start putting up low-cost houses for our brothers and sisters. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I wind up, I would like to mention one thing in relation to raising of revenue for this country. This is the issue of Kenyans who live outside this country. We have very many Kenyans who live outside this country, and we must put in place mechanisms for them to invest back home. I know people have talked about many things like dual citizenship. We know this was not a contentious issue in the Draft Constitution. As we deal with the possibility of getting a new Constitution before the next general election - although I doubt this - we should appreciate that dual citizenship could be an incentive to our people living outside the country to invest back home. I feel we can amend the current Constitution in this House to make it possible for our brothers and sisters in the diaspora to invest back home. The other day, I did some rough calculation and found that if each Kenyan out there were to invest US$1,000 per year in this country, we would be talking of a staggering investment figure of Kshs70 billion. That is a lot of money. If we got that kind of money, we would not depend on the so called development partners, who come to this country and give us conditions to fulfil in return for aid, some of which are abominable. If we could get that kind of money, we would be able to come up with some programmes that will definitely lift the lives of our people. My concern has always been that we can never be proud to be Kenyans when 60 per cent of our people live in absolute poverty. There is absolutely nothing to be proud of when the majority of our people are living in absolute poverty and when doing a few things here and there can change the equation. The challenge I would like to throw to some of the people who have declared that they want to contest for the presidency of this country is that they must be able to tell us, and this is the time, how they are going to lift the 60 per cent of Kenyans from the pit of poverty. Anybody who will convince me about that, I will give him my vote. Otherwise they should forget my vote because there are too many things that we talk about that do not help Kenyans. Unless we address the issue of poverty in this country because it goes hand in hand with unemployment, we cannot say that we are truly developing. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as we look into ways of raising taxes, we should not be punitive. Many people have talked about the Capital Gains Tax. In my view, in the long run, that will be decentive to our people in terms of investments in the housing industry. I would like to support my colleagues who made comments about taxation on idle land. Those are some of the areas that we need to look at in order to raise taxes. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those remarks, I beg to support."
}