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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this chance to contribute on this Motion. First, I would like to say that the Budget would have been good if the Government realised what it meant. Those people who are working under the Government will 1750 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 29, 2006 always promise people that things will always be right, through their good proposals. I hope that the Government will implement what it promised. I want to take up the issue of the Youth Fund from my colleague, Mr. Kiunjuri. The Youth Fund may not realise its intended purpose unless there are structures in place. If we will have a revolving fund for the youth and utilise the money to support groups that will generate income for themselves, then it will create an impact. However, if we will use the same civil servants, as corrupt as we know they are, they will make sure that they hold seminars and workshops the whole year round and the fund will not end up anywhere. They will be holding seminars in the pretext that they are doing what we refer to as capacity building. Selling of vegetables and eggs in the market is not something which requires capacity building. People have been doing it before. Even our grandfathers knew how to carry out such businesses. The kind of business we want our youth to involve themselves in is the technical kind of business which can generate funds and promote our economy. When I estimated the use of the Kshs1 billion that was set aside for the youth, I realised that if the money was to be divided equally among constituencies, each constituency would get at least Kshs5 million. Let the fund reach the youth because they are our future leaders. When I was young, we were promised by the old men in the Government that we would be the future leaders. However, the same old men have not yet left the Government. If we promise the youth today that they will be rich one day, then we should avail money to them. If we do not, when do we except them to become rich? The Minister should distribute the money as soon as he can, so that the youth can start benefiting from it. All our youth polytechnics have been run down and it will be a good move to revive them because they provide the technical expertise required in villages. We must appreciate the Government for that. Economic recovery cannot be realised if the principal groups of people concerned in generating wealth are not well facilitated. I commend the Government for the good work it has done in reviving the New Kenya Co- operatives Creameries (New KCC), the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC), Pyrethrum factories and cereals sectors. However, I hope that the Marketing Department will also be facilitated enough so that it can take care of farmers' interests. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, other countries have subsidised their agricultural products. We allow those subsidised products to be imported to compete with ours. How are we going to protect the farmer? We should reduce taxation on some items. We want the Minister to tell us how much we stand to gain by the reduction of duty on wheat. I hope it will not impact negatively on the farmers. I hope it is not going to help the importers. Our people can grow wheat if they are facilitated. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on health workers, the Ministry of Health is under- staffed. There are no facilities to make this country a healthy nation. We need to inject a lot of money in that Ministry. The recruitment of nurses, clinical officers and doctors should be decentralised, so that the needy districts--- We employ somebody who is not from Mandera and take him there. But after one year, that person will find his way back to Nairobi. We shall have a bigger population of doctors and nurses in Nairobi, when there is nobody in other areas. We need decentralisation on recruitment of medical staff. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the 74 local authorities, through the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF) are going to be allocated Kshs7.2 billion. It was a noble idea to create that Fund to assist the local authorities, but five years down the line, we are yet to see the impact of those funds. We do not have personnel and manpower to utilise those funds to make an impact. We need to amend certain sections of the LATF Act, so that salaries for councillors could be paid from June 29, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1751 the central Government. That way, high calibre people will be attracted to become councillors. But now, to be a councillor, you just need to make noise and you will be known. But we need high"
}