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{
    "id": 326257,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/326257/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 411,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Githae",
    "speaker_title": "47 Wednesday, 3rd October, 2012(P) The Minister for Finance",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 159,
        "legal_name": "Robinson Njeru Githae",
        "slug": "robinson-githae"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. On behalf of the Minister, I sincerely thank the Members of this august House for the support and contributions when the Policy Paper was being prepared. I also thank the staff of the Ministry for a job well done. It was not easy coming up with this National Development Policy Paper on Population. It was not easy. Let me also thank the staff of the National Assembly for the help and assistance that they accorded to the Committee. As I conclude my remarks, it has come out very clearly that those Members of Parliament who call on their constituents to give birth to many children for the sake of obtaining political support are doing a disservice to this country. It is not just the population that is important but it is the fact that out of that number, how many people are able to afford their daily bread. What is their disposable income? What is their state of health? What is their state of housing? How many have piped water? How many have access to tarmac roads? To me, these are the most important things and not just the numbers, as people have been saying. From this Policy, we have again seen that the low income people tend to have larger families and you have to ask yourself why. The high income people have very small families and yet it is people in the high income groups who live in large maisonettes with many bedrooms which most of the time are locked because there are no children to sleep there. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, sometimes I wonder how our other colleagues managed to live in single room kind of residences. Somebody would have a family; sometimes one would even have two wives and children. I just wonder how they used to sleep. So, we are saying that the reason as to why we have these problems is population which is not educated, and which the head of the family is unable to take care of. Therefore, we are saying that population can be an asset, but it must be well educated. It must be a population which has jobs and other means of livelihood. Having a large population just for the sake of it does not auger well for the country. It is clear that within the next 30 years; more than 50 per cent of our population will be living in urban areas. So, we must plan for our urban areas. We should not continue with the shoddy job that the local authorities are doing. One of the reasons as to why we have the so-called “illegal structures” is that our local authorities wait for somebody to start constructing yet they know that the fellow has no permit to do so. He is left to construct. Once the house is complete, they go and knock it down. So, the question that people ask is: “Where were you when this fellow was putting up the illegal structure?” If our urban centres were properly planned, even people in the neighbourhood would be able to raise an alarm and everything would be taken care of in good time. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, another thing we have seen is that we need to change the policy of local authorities. As far as local authorities are concerned, the so- called “unplanned structures” do not exist yet we know that they exist. We know that we have slum areas. So, instead of pretending that slums do not exist just because they are not planned for, we should adopt the South African example and take services to those areas. We should provide slum areas with roads, electricity, telephone services and other services. That is the way you upgrade them. I am glad that the Ministry of Housing has adopted that policy and they are now continuing with the upgrading of slum areas, instead of pretending that they do not exist. We, from the Ministry of Finance, have allocated sufficient funds for what we call “cash transfers” to the elderly members of our population as well as to the vulnerable and"
}