HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 254111,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/254111/?format=api",
"text_counter": 128,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Ndambuki",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 191,
"legal_name": "Gideon Musyoka Ndambuki",
"slug": "gideon-ndambuki"
},
"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I would like to take this opportunity to give my comments on His Excellency the President's Address. What His Excellency the President portrayed, especially on the economy, does not exist. For instance, when you look at the suffering of our people you will see that our economy has not improved. As we I speak here, Kshs11 billion worth of school fees has not been paid. This is a very good example to show how people are suffering. The growth of our economy is not being felt by the mwananchi. The mwananchi continues to suffer, and their purchasing power has gone down. Their disposable income has also gone down. This does not prove that the economy of this country is growing by five per cent as it has been said. His Excellency the President also said that many multinational companies, which moved to other countries, have started coming back. We are still experiencing relocation of companies. For instance, in our flower industry, many companies doing flower farming in Kenya have now started relocating to Ethiopia and Egypt. This is something which we would need to look into. It is something the Government should address. We do not need to believe that all is well when that is not the case. The Government should set an example by obeying the laws of this country. We have seen several occasions where Government officers have disobeyed court orders. They go ahead and do what they are ordered not to do by courts. We have also seen the Government breaching its own rules. For example, we were yesterday talking about how the Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya was suspended from his office. We are arguing about whether he committed a wrong or not. Anybody can make mistakes; if he made a mistake let him face the law. But we are arguing about the procedure used by the Government to suspend this officer from his office. There are very many contradictory laws; there is the Public Officer Ethics Act, and also the Central Bank of Kenya Act. The Government should come clear on this issue. It should come out clearly, and ensure that wrongs are corrected according to the law. What happened was a violation of the law on the tenure of office enjoyed by the Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya. Some years ago this country used to have very good incentives for people who wanted to invest in this country. We have been talking of one license to enable people to do business. But it is still difficult to have an investor coming into this country to get licensed as soon as possible. Investors are tossed from one office to another until they give up. Many investors are moving to Uganda and Tanzania, because these countries have put their houses in order. We need to address this issue to make sure that if an investor comes into this country there is a particular office that assists them. It is not good to toss around investors who want to invest in Kenya and employ April 5, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 347 Kenyans. We used to have some good incentives in the rural areas. Any company which operated from our rural areas used to get some incentives. This is one way of reducing rural-urban migration, which is causing problems because facilities in towns are over-stretched. We need to sit down and come up with incentives for those who want to invest in this country. As we know, 72 per cent of the population of this country is made up of youth, and we need to address their plight. One way of addressing this is to give investors incentives so that they can set up companies in areas outside Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. In that way our youth will be employed. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in education, a lot is happening. Twenty years ago, we were talking of Standard 8 graduates getting good jobs. Today a Standard 8 graduate cannot get anything. Now, even Form Four graduates with grade C- or D and below cannot get anything in terms of training and employment. The Government needs to come up with a policy to covers school leavers, who do not get places in universities and polytechnics. Only a very small number of students from Makueni District manages to go to public universities. The majority of our children in this district loiter around, because they have nothing to do. Their academic grades are low. We need to look for ways and means of assisting them. It is not enough to say that we have put students through to Form Four when they end up not getting anywhere. We need to come up with a solution to this problem. When we are talking about the youth, we need to address the problem of these students who do not join universities. In trade, we are losing much business. In the fishing sector, we used to command the biggest market in fish processing in our region. However, all the investors who were running the business left Kenya and settled in Tanzania, because they are enjoying preferential treatment with the European Union (EU). We have lost our preferential treatment with the EU. This is an area we need the Minister for Trade and Industry to look into so that we can do what is possible to make sure that relocation of the companies does not continue taking place. Come July, our flowers will be subjected to price reduction by the EU, which is our biggest market. This is again because we will have lost our preferential treatment with the EU. Those are some of the issues concerning our trade. The economy of our country is based on agriculture. The agricultural sector employs majority of Kenyans. If we allow things to go wrong, we will not benefit from the EU the way we used to. That will frustrate our farmers, and we will be making a very big mistake. Those are issues we need to address before they get out of hand. If it is an issue of agreement, let us approach the EU early enough so that we do not subject our farmers to the rule of reduction of the quantities we can supply and also the issue of using insecticides. On the issue of food security, everybody knows that we have been suffering from famine. Thank God, the rains have now come down and every part of this country is enjoying it. This Government had promised Kenyans that it would give them seeds. However, you will not believe what it has been doing. It has been giving a bag of five kilograms of seeds to a village, for people to share. That cannot reach everybody in a village. The Government supplied the seeds late, after the rains had started. So, the Government should be serious in addressing the needs of wananchi, because they are the ones who put it in power. At one time, I had a lot of faith in the current Government. However, now, my faith is gone after seeing what it is doing. Government Officers are violating their own rules and doing things they are not supposed to do. Majority of them were serving in the previous Government and they know why it came down. However, they seem to be following the same footsteps. They will come down faster than the previous Government did. It is high time they followed the wishes of the President. The President wishes this country well. However, there are policy-makers who do not want to do their work. With those few remarks, I support."
}