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"id": 238087,
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"speaker_name": "Dr. Kibunguchy",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Health",
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"id": 294,
"legal_name": "Enoch Wamalwa Kibunguchy",
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"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to second this very important Motion, which seeks to look into the interests of the marginalised and very poor people in our society. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as you know, poverty is an area that this Government and the previous regimes have not tackled properly. As of now, an average of 60 per cent of our people live in absolute poverty. As the Mover of the Motion has said, poverty has taken the face of a woman. That is why in many places, you find that the majority of hawkers are women. The majority of the people who till our land, from morning to evening, are women. The people who look after children - be they their own or other people's children - are usually women. So, as we talk about poverty, we should bear in mind that poverty has taken over the face of a woman. Therefore, as this Motion clearly puts it, there is no way we are going to adequately fight poverty in this country unless we start looking at the issues of women. I would like to put forward a quote relating to women as follows: \"Behind every successful family is a woman.\" We might even add to this one to say: \"Behind every successful family or community or nation is a woman.\" Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, other common quotations relating to women include the following: \"Women are the pillars of society.\" \"Think right, think women's needs.\" \"Women rights are human rights.\" Women carry the burden of not only the community but they also carry the burden of the nation and, indeed, the world. So, as we look at the issue of community social enterprise, which this Motion tries to capture, we should focus, first and foremost, on how best this will go towards alleviating poverty in society and bolstering the capacity of women. Probably, our second-biggest problem in this country, which we have to take head on, is unemployment. Over the years, so many of our youths have been loitering around without any meaningful employment. I would like to add at this stage that whoever will form the next Government must come up with programmes based on appropriate policies and ideologies, aimed at reducing unemployment in this country. Unemployment is a time bomb we are sitting on. It can very easily explode although nobody knows when that will happen. So, we should be able to avert this explosion. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Government has come up with an economic growth rate of 5.8 per cent. However, when you walk in the rural areas and the urban slums, you do not see the impact of this growth rate.Instead, the number of people who live in absolute poverty is increasing. What can we do, as a country, to make this economic growth rate trickle down to the very poor, the marginalised and those who live on the edges of life? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the ways of doing this is to address the issues that this Motion has brought forward. We must put forward a Community Social Enterprise Fund that will address some of the issues that are being mentioned. In so doing, we will be making the impact of the 5.8 economic growth rate to trickle down to the very poor and the marginalised people. The important question that one will ask is: Where will these funds come from? There are several options that we can look at. One of them is that it can be moulded along the lines of the Road Maintenance Levy Fund, alcohol levy or a tobacco levy. We could even get money directly from the Exchequer again along the lines of the Youth Fund. We would like this money to go to communities directly. It has been in the news recently that the gentleman who started Gramine Bank in Bangladesh was recently honoured with a Nobel Prize. The Gramine Bank model targets the poor and the down-trodden. This is a model that we can borrow in this country. In a nutshell, the model allows groups to borrow and co-guarantee one another without having to put forward a piece of paper like a title deed or a log book to access funds from the bank. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as a country, we do not have to invent the wheel. We can copy the success stories around the world. The proposed Community Social Enterprise Fund, October 25, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3127 or whatever name it will be called when the Bill comes up, should follow the lines of the Gramine Bank. This is a bank that has succeeded. This is an ideology that has succeeded to lift millions of people from the pit of poverty, so that they can live a decent life and be able to put food on their tables. We should look at some of the successes that we can borrow from. One such success is the concept of the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF); the concept of devolving funds to certain regions. Although you will find people like the leader of the World Bank in this country saying that communities do not have capacity to utilise these funds, I will say without any fear of contradiction that, as we mature in the CDF path, truly our communities have the capacity to absorb these funds and utilise them maximumly. They have the capacity to police the funds. In Lugari, we always say that each one of us must watch over the other. Unless we reach at a stage where each one of us is not policing and watching over the other, we shall never get rid of corruption. Unless we reach at a stage where each one of us is policing and watching over the other, we shall never make our money do as much as we expect. Most of it will be pilfered and end up in people's pockets. Finally as I conclude, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to say that the spirit of this Motion looks at the community. The community, as we know it, is dynamic and a living entity. In many places and in the past, governments have done things for communities and this, in my view, has been a costly error. We should be able to allow communities to do their own things, and this Motion has that in its spirit. With those few remarks, I beg to second."
}