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"id": 286469,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. C. Onyancha",
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"id": 126,
"legal_name": "Charles Onyancha",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, after that very passionate appeal by hon. Letimalo, I would also like to give some views on the Presidential Address to this House. At the outset, let me commend His Excellency the President for his wide covering Speech and for his good leadership. We were in some place as Members of Parliament, where I heard some people suggest that hon. Kibaki will not leave behind any legacy unless certain things are done. I would like to discuss with those people and say that he is leaving behind a legacy in two areas, namely, in infrastructure development and in expansion of the democratic space. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are seeing roads everywhere, and many of them are getting tarmacked. His Excellency the President did come to my constituency in February, 2009 and promised that a short road of some 27 kilometres would be tarmacked, which has not been done fully to-date. Somebody did half of the road. The other half of the road, which falls in my constituency, was not included. Therefore, the legacy in my constituency will be that during President Kibaki’s reign, not a single kilometre of road was tarmacked. I want to appeal to him and the Government to, at least, do the remaining 13-kiometre stretch of the road that we were promised, as soon as possible. We indeed have a lot of democratic space now. We are seeing a lot of party movements but we are not seeing a proper application of the Political Parties Act. We are seeing it being flouted, and all the time excuses are being given. Non action is the mode of the day. We wonder what the Registrar of Political Parties is doing. She is allowing impunity to creep into parties. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as much as the IDPs have largely been resettled, I would like to put forward the complaint that IDPs from my area, who were integrated in their own families, have not been receiving any assistance from the Government. The Minister of State for Special Programmes was there recently. She sent Kshs10,000 for each IDP as the first and final settlement amount for those IDPs. I wish to strongly object to the statement she made to the effect that Kshs10,000 was enough to resettle IDPs, some of whom had both their hands amputated by criminal gangs during the post-election violence. Before I forget, let me commend the President for appointing my friend, Mr. Eugene Wamalwa, the Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs. I have worked with hon. Wamalwa before and I found him to be a very efficient person, as a director, and very incorruptible. Now that he is in charge of the docket responsible for the fight against corruption, I hope he will be able to push those virtues into the wider society, so that we can reduce the ill of corruption in our country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, our country is at risk of attack from the youth because of joblessness. We have a lot of materials that can actually be utilised but which are going to waste or being exported in their raw form. We have bananas and tea. Tea is being exported in tea chaste, instead of being packaged locally and exported as finished product that is ready for sale in supermarkets. These are some of the value addition initiatives that would enable us to create employment for our youth, and which need to be looked into as a matter of urgency. On agriculture, the free fertilizers that are provided by the Government for transmission to small-scale farmers do not reach them. Quite a bit of these fertilizers end up in shops because it is not clearly marked that it is Government issued. I want to appeal to the Ministry concerned to distribute the fertilizers in specially marked packages, on which it is indicated that it is meant for free issuance to mwananchi . I would also like the Ministry to inspect the local outlets that sell Government issued fertilizers and take appropriate action against them because these are people who continue to promote corruption. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the issue of roads, there is the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), which came into being a few years ago. This Authority has not focussed on urban roads at all in Kisii. We have very bad roads within the urban areas of Kisii Country. I wish to appeal to the General Manager and the Ministry of Roads to look into the issue of roads that are now getting destroyed by rains. These are roads which were once tarmacked and they now have to be re-done. I would now like to turn to the Economic Stimulus Programme. This was a very good programme which was supposed to stimulate the economy through fast injection of funding. This was meant to be used very quickly to create employment and create new facilities like markets and health centres. It is sad to note that some of those projects have not taken off. We recently toured most parts of western Kenya and found that some of the projects have not taken off because of poor supervision by the Ministry of Local Government due to corruption. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the tendering process had been centralised within the Ministry and tenders were mixed up. Tenders were awarded to people who did not even qualify or tenders for more than one project were awarded to one person who did not have the capacity to perform. The programme, therefore, lost the purpose of stimulating the economy. Therefore, I want to appeal to the Government that a new economic stimulus programme be instituted and have it injected into the economy quickly, so that we can benefit from it. The programme should also continue to be based on the constituency as the focal point of development. I now want to turn to the issue of cattle theft in Borabu, Kisii District. As Dr. Laboso has mentioned, this is a very serious problem. There have been thefts of two or three cattle during a raid, and there have been some killings in the process yet we have camps of armed Administration Police (APs) and General Service Unit (GSU) personnel in those areas, who purport to be protecting mwananchi . I want the relevant Ministry to take into account the fact that the people being killed are Kenyans and ensure that the security personnel that have been posted there do their job of protecting both livestock and the people, some of whom are now suffering due to loss of their relatives during incidents of cattle theft. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in conclusion, let me appeal to the Commissioner of Revenue Allocation to reconsider his criteria of allocation of resources by removing cities, which already have schools, roads and so on, from the category of populated areas and give the money meant for those cities to sparsely populated areas in the North Eastern Province and to heavily populated areas like Kisii, which have greater needs than areas like Nairobi, which are already developed. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}