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"id": 242883,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/242883/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Awori",
"speaker_title": "The Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs",
"speaker": {
"id": 290,
"legal_name": "Moody Arthur Awori",
"slug": "moody-awori"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. NGOs are assuming an extremely important role not just in this country, but in the whole world. Today, the amount of money that NGOs channel in various projects world-wide is much more than what is given by the World Bank. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have many NGOs in this country, but because we do not have a very clear policy, they operate in a very haphazard manner. For a country like Kenya July 13, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2105 to have more than 4,000 NGOs, it calls for an analysis of the situation. I know that NGOs play a very important role in this country. When donors stopped helping Kenya, we continued to progress partly because of the NGOs. The NGOs that we know about pump into this country close to Kshs100 billion! That is a lot of money that needs to be regulated. We do not want to control NGOs. Controls always create situations where people engage in under-hand things. But we need to regulate them. We want a proper definition of NGOs. Currently, we have NGOs which concentrate on advocacy. There are others that engage in sustainable development, particularly in the area of children. They have distinguished themselves in that field. For many years, in the rural areas, there have been organisations like Action Aid and Christian Children Fund. They bring in money directly for what is known as one-to-one. That has been of great help in education, health and other matters. At the same time, we have had advocacy NGOs. They did a lot of good job when the Government was dictatorial. They were able to work with some people behind the scenes to ensure that, those who were fighting dictatorship were well funded. But that is where we need to control. They can go out of their way completely and may destabilize a government that is working. We have even seen that at the local level. Certain NGOs have chosen certain people to work with. In many cases, they have always sided, for some reason, with the Opposition. That has created a situation where no work can be properly done. They believe that they have a duty to fight for good governance and human rights. We accept that. In countries where human rights records are poor, advocacy NGOs play a very major role. We want a policy in this country where, before an NGO is registered, it must show clearly what it will be engaged in. We are not saying that NGOs that work for advocacy should not be registered. That is because advocacy is still required. We need advocacy in situations like now, where children have been badly used by some people. We need advocacy organisations to work in tandem with the Government. They must know the Government policy. For example, we passed the Children Act. It protects children's rights. They include education, health and protection against child labour. Those are stated Government policies. Any NGO that is working on that should really work with the Government itself. Where child labour is concerned, we have regulations at the Ministry of Labour and Human Resource Development. NGOs that work on advocacy on children should consult that Ministry very regularly. There are many NGOs which are not registered, and then they just go and start operating, particularly in the rural areas. When they are doing that, they are not doing it for the benefit of the children or the people. They are compiling statistics and sending them overseas which show that there is poverty here or there and get money for themselves. Let me give a very good example. Only recently, an NGO which is not even registered in this country, but which calls itself Voiceless Children, went into a constituency with one thing only; to show the poverty of the constituency. They took pictures of a school. They left a brand new school block which had been funded by the CDF and they took pictures of the old dilapidated building, and they showed that, that is the poverty situation of that area. When they were confronted, the headmaster of the school said they did that because if they had shown better buildings, they would not be funded. They had to show that, that school had no buildings except the mud walls and that children were learning under trees. This is collecting money under false pretences. We would like to ensure that such NGOs do not operate. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are NGOs which, although we threw the doors of the prisons wide open so that they can go in and see, concentrate on what has not been done and they are not showing what has been done in the prisons. This, again, is showing a false picture. We would like those NGOs to be regulated. We want actually to reduce the NGOs from the 4,200 that are there to a manageable figure. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the hon. Member who spoke before me talked of transparency and accountability. This is extremely important. Ongata Rongai, for example, was initially built through money from NGOs. These were briefcase NGOs which solicited funds from 2106 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 13, 2006 outside and the people who were running them profited. This is showing a bad picture on the country. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}