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{
    "id": 334942,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/334942/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 337,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Mureithi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 89,
        "legal_name": "Erastus Kihara Mureithi",
        "slug": "erastus-mureithi"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was educated with money from pyrethrum. As I speak today, in Nyandarua where we are supposed to have some form of cash crop, the crop has gone. As a result, people are really depending on potatoes and many young people are not being gainfully engaged. At one time, Kenya was contributing 60 per cent of the total world production of pyrethrum. Today, we are producing less than 5 per cent in the world, yet our soils produce the best crop with the highest pyrethrin content. That is why people even had to come from China to get some of our crop here to do research on increasing their pyrethrin content. This resulted into us losing. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think it is high time we relooked at the way we appoint boards. If you turn to Clause 7 and look at the way the board is being appointed, it is skewed towards the Government. We have the Permanent Secretary and five persons appointed by the Minister. Since this is a people’s body, we should give opportunity to the pyrethrum growers in those 19 counties to actually elect their own representatives, so that they have a say. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in the transition period, because we have a lot of investment that has been done by the farmers, we should not allow what happened to the Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC) 2000, where all the assets were taken by a few individuals and the farmers never benefitted at all. Even when it was later on made the New KCC, the same farmers lost. Therefore, we should look at those areas so that we give back to the farmers the responsibility to run their institutions, rather than making it completely the responsibility of the Government. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am glad to hear that we should not always be centralizing institutions in Nairobi. When you go and see the investments that the farmers have done in Nakuru, it would be a tragedy to move even the regulatory body from Nakuru to Nairobi, yet the investment has been contributed by the farmers."
}