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"id": 246316,
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"speaker_name": "Mr Angwenyi",
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"legal_name": "Jimmy Nuru Ondieki Angwenyi",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for giving me a chance to contribute to this important Motion. Right from the onset, I want to thank the Minister for Finance for giving us a very good Budget. We do require infrastructure and employment opportunities for our youth. We need to develop our agricultural production. I believe the Minister has addressed some of those issues properly. However, there are certain issues that I would like him to focus on. The first one is to expand our youth programme. He should increase the Kshs1.5 billion that he has allocated to the youth. He can do so in the revised estimates. We have unemployment rate of 60 per cent in this country. Many of our youths are lying idle in our streets and homes. I wish the Minister could come up with a programme where our youths could be engaged in public works. University, college and high school graduates should be employed at particular levels. For example, all those who have completed high school at a particular year should be employed and given the minimum wage paid to civil servants. If we employ, at least, 1,000 youths from each constituency, about 210,000 youths will be employed. If you paid them a minimum wage of Kshs5,000, that will cost 1492 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 21, 2006 us about Kshs1 billion a month. If you multiply that by 12 months in a year, it amounts to Kshs12 billion. If the Minister made available that money, we could employ 210,000 youths in this country. That would absorb so many youths and stop them from being idle. That is not a lot of money! We have seen what happened with Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg. We spent billions of shillings to pay \"ghost\" suppliers and contractors. I wish the Minister could address that issue. That will be seen clearly, compared to the 460,000 jobs that we have been told were created in the last one year. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to address the issue of infrastructure in rural areas. I come from Kitutu Chache Constituency. My constituents are very hard working people. Our women get up at 5.00 a.m. to go to their shambas . They stay there until 5.00 p.m. or 6.00 p.m. They produce horticultural and other agricultural products. However, they have no roads to deliver that produce to the market. Why can we not avail adequate resources to those hard working Kenyans? I happen to have gone to Moyale recently. I saw the way those people work. But they have no infrastructure to deliver whatever little they produce to the market. If the amount of money we get from Fuel Levy is used adequately, we can provide a very good infrastructure. By doing so, this country will develop even faster. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish the Minister could have addressed the issue of slums, especially in urban centres. If you visit Kibera slums, there are no roads, electricity, central sewerage system and adequate water. Those are Kenyans! Those are our people who live in squalid conditions. Could the Minister address some of those issues? Could he work together with his colleague in the Ministry of Local Government and provide those people with basic services? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you visit Mathare slums in Kasarani Constituency, you will not be able to eat even if you were offered a meal. The stench from the raw sewage in that area cannot allow you to even take a soda! Those are Kenyans whose plight we must address. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I thought the Government promised to construct 150,000 houses in this country! I do not see any adequate allocation for that project in this Budget. In fact, I was promised that, if they constructed 150,000 housing units in this country, about 5,000 units will be in Kisii Town, which happens to be in my constituency. I cannot see that money allocated in this Budget. Even my friend, Mr. N. Nyagah, is worried because his people live in squalor. There are no houses in Pumwani! They have a problem there, and yet he is the Chief Whip! I wish the Minister could address some of those issues, so that we can solve some of the problems that we see in our constituencies, both in Nairobi and upcountry."
}