HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 383981,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/383981/?format=api",
"text_counter": 165,
"type": "other",
"speaker_name": "",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "We still train people for white collar jobs, the way I see our system, but if we sit down and ask ourselves as Kenyans, since 1963, it is 50 years today; we have come up with the various brilliant policies and none has delivered us until July 2008, when the retired President and the Prime Minister launched the only solution to the problem, Vision 2030. It said that in the next five years, by the year 2012, Eldoret and Kisumu would be the hub for agro-based industries. I have not seen one single industry that has been built between the year 2008 and now; five years have gone. We are the best at manufacturing documents and storing them. For example, when I became the PS for Industrialization, I asked “has there been any attempt to do a factory for fertilizer?” and they said yes. They took me to the library and I found a whole shelf full of documents, plus the drawing of the only fertilizer plant that was supposed to have been done – and I think it was done on paperwork in 1983; we do not have fertilizers. As we even speak now, do you know that there is no Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (CAN) in Kenya; no ammonia, no urea? So, wait for problems next year associated with hunger. So, Madam Temporary Speaker, I was going to support this Motion. What does it cost us if we come up with trial and error techniques; try, fail; try, succeed? When we sat down and looked at the problems, our problem is in one pillar. Vision 2030 has three pillars; political, social and economic pillars. The pillar that has no problem is the political pillar. We have not given direction completely on where the nation is supposed to go, and for which we stand by it. That is why I am saying, with all the interest this Motion has generated, we need to have a Committee of this House dealing with industrialization and enterprise. Why? It is because we have the Committee on Agriculture and Livestock. So what after the animals and the maize or plants? We need to add value to them. We need to have a Committee that is specifically sitting to talk about value addition so that the graduates that we are talking about can now be useful. We even went further to talk about the Industrialization Fund; the Kenya Industrial Estates. We even came up with a brilliant idea by our current President now, the Economic Stimulus Programs (ESP) and projects in the year 2009. Every constituency has a Constituency Industrial Development Centre, but there are no tools nor workers there. Two, we even built fresh produce markets – I keep seeing one and I even saw one today in the morning between Eldoret Town and Eldoret Airport – but there are no women selling any fresh products there. Why? Because there is no money. The money we talk about, the Youth Enterprise Development Fund and the Women Enterprise Development Fund – although our colleague came to talk about it – maybe that money is working in Nairobi; but it is not there in the interior counties or the counties which are far away from Nairobi. So, it could be rotating here in the offices, in boardrooms, seminars and in the banks. I agree when you say banks, because even the SME Fund that was funded by the World Bank (WB), they said “do not give the people the money; train the banks so that the banks can come up with products to lend to your people. So, now, Kenya is going to pay a loan to the bank for training people who are looking for money, but the real people who are supposed to benefit are not benefitting. This is where the whole thing is going wrong. We need to relook at the whole picture; that, as a country, where do we want to go? When we talk of agriculture, it is not the The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}