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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this Motion. While I congratulate the Minister for the Budget Speech, I would like to point out that the Budget process is flawed. It is always top-down instead of being bottom-up. We need to change it. The Budget is not owned by the wananchi. Therefore, the mwananchi cannot hold the Government responsible when it comes to the Budget process. Therefore, the Minister needs to start the process from the sub-location to the location and then to the district level, just the way the CDF is being handled. That way, wananchi will articulate their problems, which will then be factored into the Budget. For now, the Budget is a ritual which is done by the mandarins at 1622 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 27, 2006 Treasury without taking into account the people's problems. Therefore, in next year's Budget, I hope the Treasury will go down to the grassroots to collect the people's views and find out their problems. For example, the Minister has now raised the fuel levy. If they had checked with wananchi, I do not think they would have done that. Until we reverse this, the economy will not grow as expected. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Budget needs to address the Millennium Development Goals. (MDGs). For example, in the areas hit by HIV/AIDS, people are not getting therapy. The Global Fund is there, yet drugs are not reaching people. Our people must access medical treatment where necessary. As it is, the people in the lake region are not getting treatment. Two weeks ago, on the Floor of this House, it was said that in Butula Constituency, the infection rate of HIV/AIDS is 33 per cent. These people are not getting treatment at all, and they are left to die without care from the Government. Health is a human right and, therefore, the health of the people must be addressed. Right now, we are left with very many orphans who cannot access education or food. We need to look into these MDGs and take care of the vulnerable. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, women in this country remain the most vulnerable and poor. They need to be empowered. They till the land, fetch water and do all the donkey work. Women can hardly access finance because they do not have collaterals. Therefore, they cannot go to a bank and borrow money. It is time we considered having a women's bank where women can borrow money without collaterals. This is because commercial banks charge a lot of interest. Sometime this year, the Kenya Women Finance Trust came to my constituency and identified women for loans. Before long, the same bank was taking the women's furniture and livestock because they were unable to pay the loans. Therefore, we need a more women-friendly institution which can help the Kenyan women to come up. As it is, they are left to themselves to suffer without collaterals, and they will continue being poor and this country will not move on. Turning to the sugar levy, I want to express the feelings of my people who grow cane. These cane farmers are already poor enough. To load on them Sugar Development Levy is just putting the last nail in their coffins. I think this is meant to create an avenue for importation of cheap sugar for the sugar barons while the six million Kenyans who grow cane will be more impoverished. This needs to be looked into by the Minister for Finance so that these people are not impoverished while the barons import cheap sugar into the country. I am sure the sugar grown in this country cannot be sold because once you load on the levy, the locally-produced sugar will become more expensive. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to touch on education. While it is very commendable to have free primary education, I would think that we should have left the parents to pay for primary education and put more money into secondary education and university loans. As it is, last week, we had only 10,000 Kenyans admitted to universities, and 60,000 left out. How are we going to develop manpower when such a high number of Kenyans cannot access education? I do not think we are doing much to develop human resource in this country. It is only a few who can make it and the rest are left to rot away. Therefore, we need to look again at the free primary education. I think most parents can afford primary education. But at secondary level, many parents cannot afford, leave alone university. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the girl child starts primary at 50 per cent. At secondary school, she is barely at 30 per cent. At university, she will be lucky to be at 5 per cent. Therefore, we need to address inequality in girl child education. If we continue like this, we shall not move on. If you educate a woman, you educate the community. You educate a man, you educate an individual. Therefore, we need to look into the academic institutions for the girl child, pay attention to them, improve facilities so that the girl child can move on. As it is now, the girl child is disadvantaged and we are wasting her as a human resource. Therefore, the Ministry of Education has to think June 27, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1623 twice and look at the human resource we are producing at the end of production line. We are wasting a lot of human resource because not many Kenyans can access university education. This issue needs to be addressed without leaving it to chance saying that Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) has enough money and yet it has very little money. When the Education Bill came to this Floor, we recommended that there should be money for research at the universities. But that is not happening. So long as universities do not get money for research, we are not going to develop. There are a lot of good ideas which can become good innovations, but unless they are backed up by research and development, those ideas will be stolen by other people who can put them into products and then sell them to us. For example, one young man in Kisumu has developed a motorised bicycle that can run on one litre of petrol for 100 kilometres. That is an innovation that needs to be patented and protected and turned into products for boda boda people who cannot afford motorbikes. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}