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"id": 245912,
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"speaker_name": "Prof. Maathai",
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"legal_name": "Wangari Muta Maathai",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this Motion. First, I want to congratulate the Minister for his excellent Budget Speech. I also want to congratulate him for increasing the amount of money allocated to the CDF. As hon. Members have said, this is actually one area where our people have the opportunity to bite the national cake directly. It was wonderful that the Minister was able to grant us the increase. I would also like to thank the Minister for the improvements that continue to be realised in the collection of taxes and the fact that now we are seeing more people from organisations and initiatives that have been avoiding to pay taxes pay tax without fail. Probably, this effort by the Government to get everybody to pay his taxes is the reason why we can now see some people being exposed. It is extremely embarrassing to see big institutions avoiding to pay taxes when the Government is pursuing more people like the mama mboga to pay their taxes. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to congratulate the Minister for cutting down on wastage in the Government, especially with regard to Ministers. As others have said, all of us who have served in the Government have sometimes felt that people are more interested in the privileges that they get when they become Ministers than the services that they are supposed to provide. I know, for example, that if a Minister is called to go to Mombasa, he or she will go by aeroplane. A Government car will then be driven from here to Mombasa to pick the Minister from the airport to the hotel when, in fact, there are cars within the Ministry in Mombasa which could pick the Minister. Ministers are involved in such wastage because of their egos and the feeling of greatness, rather than the need to provide service. They do not need to have cars driven all the way just to pick them from the airport. So, I am really very happy that the Minister has been able to curb this wastage and other forms of wastage that we find in Ministries. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to congratulate the Minister also for the allocation to the education docket. Although it seems like a lot of money has been allocated to the Ministry of Education, it is not adequate. This is because we really need to understand that one of the reasons why we, as a country, have not been as successful as many other countries, is because we continue to leave the education of our people largely to parents. Because we do not have facilities such as loans being availed to students, except to a small extent at the university level, we still have many of our children not completing Form Four. As has been said by some hon. Members, when students complete Form Four, many of them are not able join universities, because they do not have adequate resources. I think that, we, as a country, must invest in our people. Until we invest in our people in form of education, by allowing as many students as possible to get higher education especially in a country like this where we use a foreign language, we will not compete with other countries. We may never really attain the level of development in other countries. I, therefore, wish to request the Minister to pay special attention to polytechnics. I know that the Government is looking at this. This is an area where we really need to invest, because a Form Four leaver without any extra skills is actually more useless than somebody who never went to school. This is because he or she cannot speak English or Kiswahili well. Therefore, nobody is going to engage them because they speak their mother tongue. So, such persons virtually become useless to themselves and the country. The investment that we shall have made at the primary level and the bursaries that we shall have given to them at the secondary school level will go to waste. So, it is very important that we invest in education, especially in higher education and polytechnics. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, some time ago, we actually passed a Motion, but I am not quite sure whether it became law, appealing to the Government to release certificates of students who complete secondary school education. That Motion was actually brought by you. In my June 27, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1621 constituency, I am constantly confronted by students who sat for their examinations but cannot secure jobs because they do not have their certificates. If we are willing to spend money on bursaries, why can we not also spend money to assist headmasters, so that they can release certificates to students so that they can go and look for jobs? It does not make sense to withhold students' certificates. There can be a way of knowing the number of those certificates that are withheld because financially-able parents are not willing to pay fees, and the students whose parents are genuinely unable to pay outstanding fees, so that their certificates can be released to them. Those certificates can even be released on loan agreement, so that when the owners get jobs, they pay their outstanding fees balances, the same way we do at the university level. I think we are frustrating many students because their certificates are withheld. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to mention something about roads. The Ministry of Roads and Public Works continues to be one of the greatest causes of soil erosion. This is because the people who make roads open up roads leaving the soil completely unprotected. When it rains, a massive amount of soil is lost from these roads. We will continue causing waste if we are not going to manage the water that runs along roads. We need to learn how to harvest rain water. We lose both the water and the soil and yet, we have spent so much money constructing roads. Now that we experienced much rain in this country recently, very many roads will need to be rehabilitated by the road engineers, because they were spoilt by the heavy water, literally rivers, that was running along them. Why can the Ministry of Roads and Public Works and the Ministry of Agriculture not get together and learn how to manage water that runs along roads, so that we can save the soil? Maybe the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources should also be involved, because soil is one of the most important natural resources that he is supposed to protect. There are several other Ministries that are involved, including the Ministry of Energy. All that soil ends up in our hydro-electric power dams. It goes and silts these dams. But it is the Ministry of Roads and Public Works which opens up land and leaves soil exposed to erosion. I must say that, as long as I have lived, I have never seen anybody in the Ministry of Roads and Public Works planting a tree, but I have seen very many of its officers cutting down trees along the roads. I wonder why they cut down trees, yet cars do not travel on road reserves. I wish the Ministry could learn to rehabilitate land once they dig it up by planting trees and protecting the roads from landslides, especially when it rains. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to support very strongly the resettlement of the people, who are internally displaced. These are people about whom nobody worries because the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) does not worry about the internally displaced. But we have literally millions of people in this country, who are internally displaced. Although the Minister has allocated a small amount to assist them, we have been talking about this issue from as far back as I can remember. The first time this displacement took place was during the tribal clashes of 1991. Up to now many people have never been able to go back to their land. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, I want to support the idea of channelling the youth money through the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}