Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 276660,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/276660/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 496,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Tempraory Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to give credit to the present Minister. I want to say that he is co-operating and he has been honest to the House. That is the kind of attitude that we expect now and in the future. Therefore, I want to urge Members of Parliament to support this Motion. Under agriculture, I want to single out one particular item called coffee. Today in this country, we are capable of producing only 15 per cent of coffee and yet, we are crying for the dollar. I find it completely paradoxical in this country that we want to vote money for tourism and things that we do not understand and things that depend on others. Coffee in this country is able to give us six times the amount of foreign exchange it is giving us. Why it is not giving us that kind of money is because today, as we know, agriculture - coffee included - there is nowhere where our farmers can go and borrow money. They cannot access money that can be spread over a long period of time and paid through affordable ways. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would, therefore, like to ask that the Ministry of Agriculture, even through Treasury, channels some money for such important items like growing coffee. Let that money go directly to the people. We have an issue, for example, with the kind of money we are giving to the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDP). We give it to a bank. The bank earns money from it, yet it is public money. It does not make the slightest sense to me. It is like you, as a person, when you want to lend money to somebody, taking that money to a bank for that person to go to the bank to borrow it and repay it with interest. Therefore, I would like to ask the Government to devise a way of channelling money directly to the beneficiaries. When we mean to help, say, women; we channel the money directly to them. If it is the youth, we channel the money there. If it is coffee farmers we want to help, let us channel the money there directly. The idea of channelling money through commercial banks is not good. Let us not listen to outsiders who come here and say that the Government should not be involved in this or that. I do not think it will work. It never worked in their countries. They only come here to speak that language when in their own countries, they are just small fellows lecturing in some small universities. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish to end my contribution by saying that I support the Motion. I want to ask the Minister to continue engaging the House in the way he is doing. Thank you."
}