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{
    "id": 237824,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/237824/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 316,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to support the Bill as it seeks to free Kenyans and other persons doing business in this country from the rigours and inconveniences of licences. We have had ridiculous requirements in our statute books like regulation of hours for opening shops, regulations for looking for monuments and antiquities, regulations for transporting certain items. The Bill seeks to abolish the need to license traditional liquor so that our constituents can now brew and consume alcohol as they wish, as we all do when we walk into any open bar and 3224 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 26, 2006 consume alcohol. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Bill seeks to remove the bottlenecks that the Government would otherwise place on Kenyans who want to engage in their own activities. I am surprised to see that we had even laws that required you to have a licence to build a cowshed in your homestead. Laws as ridiculous as that are now being repealed. We also are repealing several charges that are levied under the Local Authorities Act. The Bill also requires to repeal sections of the Distress for Rent Act to abolish the requirement for licensing of auctioneers by the Registrar of the High Court. It deals with mining and crops. Even crops like cotton where we passed a new Bill the other day, was still under vestiges of archaic laws in our books. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think this is a Bill that this House must support. It is going to make life easier and better. It is going to make Kenyans more productive and engage more in business activities. I do support the Bill fully. I want to urge the House to support it because we have a myriad of laws in our statute books that have no meaning to modern-day Kenya. These are laws, that if they were applied strictly, the operations of life in this country would come to a standstill. They would slow down economic growth, innovations and everything that we are doing to make Kenya a vibrant economic powerhouse in the region. Indeed, this is not a matter that we need to belabour. I think it is incumbent upon us to support this Bill and pass it because it is unfettering Kenyans from the vestiges and clutches of archaic laws, some that were passed in colonial days. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with this, I want to urge the Departmental Committees of this House. We vote money that will assist committees even in doing research. The Departmental Committees, can on their own, look at the laws and even hire experts to look at various statutes and advise this House whether there are statutes we need or we do not need. We have the Law Reform Commission whose duty is to reform laws. One wonders what they are doing when we still have laws that require you and me to seek a licence to build a cow shed in our homesteads, something that is totally archaic and many others. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we all know that you do not need to be regulated by anybody to open your shop at whatever time and yet we have laws that regulate that you have to open your shop from this time to this time. I think we need, as a country, to be more innovative than this and arms of Government and public, including this Parliament, that have a duty to legislate, must live up to the expectations of this country by taking the initiative and advise Parliament to repeal some of these laws. I beg to support."
}