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{
"id": 243938,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Musila",
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"speaker": {
"id": 94,
"legal_name": "David Musila",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this being the Ministry under the President himself, I have certain issues to address. The President did not come from Mars. He was elected by your constituents and my constituents. I have a responsibility to point out certain problems which I think the President, as the foremost leader, being in charge of the Ministry, should know. These are July 11, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1965 particularly matters that relate to my constituency; my people are hurt. They are hurt because they have no water. One may say that this is not the Vote for the Ministry of Water and Irrigation; that is right. However, it is the President who went round the country four years ago and promised my constituents that as soon as he took over, he would make sure that boreholes were sunk and dams built. However, my people still walk 20 kilometres to look for water, despite the promise. We have not seen any water yet, and I hope that the President will take action. I hope the Minister will take the message to him that we are still waiting for him to fulfil the promise he made four years ago. I was looking through the Printed Estimates to see the allocations made for the arid and semi arid areas, and saw that Mwingi District has been allocated Kshs6.3 million under the Arid Land Resource Management Programme (ALRMP) for Water. That money can sink only two boreholes. At that rate, I do not think the President will be able to fulfil the promise he made to my people. My people are hurt because they have not had rain in the last four years. The Office of the President is also very slow in distributing food. It seems as if it is waiting until people start dying so that it can resume the distribution of food. My people are hurt because their children have no teachers, despite the provision of the free primary education. That is a very serious matter. Mwingi District has a shortage of 1,200 teachers. However, come July, we will be given 100 teachers to recruit. That will not help. We have classrooms with over 100 children. I think it is up to the President, whom we elected overwhelmingly, to look into that issue. My constituents are hurt because thousands of their children are not employed. Many people in my district are not employed, despite the fact that they left high schools many years ago. They do not have their school certificates because they still owe fees balances yet, you know those people cannot afford to pay school fees, owing to poverty. This House played its part and passed a Motion asking the Government to order the release of certificates held by head teachers on account of fees balances. However, nothing has been done to that effect. I hope that this time round, the President will listen to the cry of over 1 million youth of this country, who are languishing in poverty and cannot access jobs because their certificates are held in schools. Finally, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Office of the President must ensure that destruction of natural resources like forests, water catchment areas, land grabbing and other ills do not happen. I say that because I know that, if the Office of the President was serious enough - there are people on the ground like chiefs, assistant chiefs and district officers - the kind of destruction of natural resources that has continued to happen under the watch of the Provincial Administration would be a thing of the past. I hope that the Office of the President will continue to provide the necessary leadership, if we are to expect other Ministries to improve on their performance on governance, resource management and other ills that bedevil this country. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}