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"speaker_name": "Mr. Billow",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. As one hon. Member mentioned here, I think some of us are shedding crocodile tears for northern Kenya. An hon. Member put it very aptly, that when those who are in the Government, and are in charge of resources and prepare the Budget, stand before us in this House and tell us that the Government should allocate more money to this area, knowing well that this House has no authority at all to reduce or alter the Budget by one shilling, they are engaging in hypocracy. It is, indeed, unfortunate that we have to always express grief for the people of northern Kenya when there is a tragedy. It is wrong, in my view, for this Government to make Friday a national day to mourn for the people of northern Kenya because they lost their leaders. I feel that is mockery. What the people of northern Kenya need is justice. Those whose people were killed in clashes need justice. They want those who killed their people to be arrested by the Government and brought to book. They do not need people to mourn for them or go to churches and ring bells. They need a Government that can provide security and the resources that they need. I think we have taken the people of northern Kenya for a ride for a long time. We were told that there was an Economic Recovery Strategy for northern Kenya. In that book, which I condemned immediately after it was launched because it was a naive attempt to 588 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 19, 2006 deceive the people of northern Kenya, there is not a single new project. What they did was to take the MTEF, the three-year budgetary provisions for the Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF), the CDF and all the other usual provisions and put them together for the seven districts. They then said: This is the new Economic Recovery Strategy for northern Kenya. It is wrong for us to sit here every time there is a tragedy to try and pretend that we are providing what people need. I think it is wrong for anyone to say also that I am apportioning blame. I am not! If that area needs development, for heaven's sake let us see that development in terms of the resource allocations that come to this House. We want to see it from those hon. Members seated on the Government side. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the one important thing which the Government has failed to appreciate since Independence is that pastoralism is a way of life. There are people who depend on livestock as their source of living. As long as we do not appreciate that and have a policy that addresses pastoralist communities, we will never get rid of this problem that we are talking about. I want to thank all those hon. Members who have said that there are many causes of insecurity, including lack of development and so forth. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is a wrong perception out there about the people of northern Kenya. For the last three weeks, newspapers have been writing stories, quoting religious leaders, politicians, Government leaders and others, creating an impression that the people of northern Kenya, and particularly those in the North Eastern Province, are a murderous community in a self-destruction mode; people who senselessly want to kill themselves. That perception is wrong. It is also wrong for anyone to imagine that banditry is the same as carjacking or that cattle rustling should be treated like robbery. I do not think that there is any tribe or any community in northern Kenya which sits down and plans to commit cattle rustling. There is no community which sits down and decides to commit banditry. These things are, of course, done by individuals. However, the circumstances on the ground dictate that we handle those kind of crimes differently from the way they are being handled in Nairobi or in other parts of this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it has been said very clearly that there is no way we can address these issues unless we address the underlying problem. We all know that even in Nairobi, and in many other parts of this country, the incidence of crime is related to the level of poverty in the country. The level of poverty in that area is extreme. The level of under-development is extreme. There is lack of infrastructure, as has been mentioned, a serious problem of unemployment and lack of education, among other problems. When you have 20 per cent enrolment in schools, it means that the remaining 80 per cent of children who are not in school are available to be engaged as militia, in cattle rustling and in all sorts of vices. All these problems create alienation. It is this alienation that is creating all this resentment. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}