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"speaker_name": "Mr. Ethuro",
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"legal_name": "Ekwee David Ethuro",
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"content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, first, I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak immediately after my senior pastoralist in the business, one hon. William ole Ntimama. Age has never affected the brains of this old man. He is sharp, clear and eloquent, just as I used to know him. He used to be my favourite speaker for the Kenya Pastoralists Forum. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also rise to contribute to this Bill because of one man, my good friend, hon. James Orengo, the Minister for Lands. One other issue after the Constitution that this country needed to address was the land issue. Indeed, immediately after we promulgated the Constitution, this House last week dealt with devolution and now, we are starting with the issue of land. I think that is the way it is supposed to be and the sequence to follow. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also would like to pay tribute to the Mau Mau and all Kenyans of goodwill who have stood up for the right of Kenyans to own their own property; property that is given by God because none of us created land. But as we came now to look at the land, some of us decided that the various land tenure systems in place commoditized everything. This is what we want to address this time round. The pastoral production system may not be contributing to the national marketing processes, where you can quantify its value, but it is contributing to the security of lives and livelihoods of the pastoral communities. That must enter into the national statistics and the economy. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we went to the Maasai and came with the group ranches in 1965, in effect, we used another particular system that knew that land must be sold at the market place, in a perfect competition manner; that we give it to a willing seller and willing buyer. Even a trained economist – and I am one of such – can tell you that things do not work under those perfect market assumptions. To the extent of what happened in Maasailand, we sold our wealth and bought poverty. That is what is afflicting this country up to today. For the rest of Northern Kenya, even an attempt to do demarcation and adjudication of land has never been commenced by this Government. I want to plead with hon. Orengo that it is not often that God gives you a chance to serve in the Cabinet. I am even told now that you have to make a choice whether to be a Cabinet Secretary or come and just languish here as a Backbencher forever. This is an opportunity that you must put to proper use. I really want timelines, especially in Northern Kenya and other areas that are yet to be demarcated and adjudicated. There must be clear timelines as we have done in the Constitution. We have come to realize that 48 years of Independence have not sorted the problem. This is why we cured most of these things in the Constitution in terms of Commissions and a Schedule to give specific guidelines. That must inform the rest of the processes. It must inform the way we are going to deal with land also. We should put clear timetables that by the end of a particular period, because things must come to some conclusion, all the land in this country has been adjudicated. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are talking about titles and I am sure all people think that titles are title deeds. Where I come from, there are very few title deeds. In fact, I have a Question pending before the Minister for the last three years, because they have not been able to determine how many titles are in Turkana County. They are still using allotment letters. They decided that there would be no more allocation of land from 1992. They are using the minutes of 1992 to allocate land in 2012. In fact, I was surprised and wondered where the Cabinet of Kenya resides and whether they have done what the Cabinet in “Malties” did. They went underground in order to appreciate the effect of global warming."
}