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{
    "id": 385131,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/385131/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 144,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "and chaos. This Constitution was not written so that we promote chaos in this country. When a good idea comes, like that of the CDF, we celebrate it. But when a better idea comes, like the county governments idea, then the good idea must give way to a better idea. This is what I am promoting. Look at the job that we have been given at the counties. If you look at the manifestos of everybody in this country, including that of Obama in America, they talk about agriculture. There is no country or a political party that has ever written a manifesto without agriculture as the prime mover. Of course, you can talk of industrialization. However, if you cannot feed your people, you will be overthrown. The Soviet Union Empire collapsed because they could not feed their people in winter. America had to give them some money. They broke into pieces. So, agriculture is the core of any society or economy, and this function has been given to the county. So, you should give the county money to run agriculture because it is the biggest thing in this country. In fact, it employs 70 per cent of the workforce in this country. It can employ more if we put more money in it. There is a young lady from my own county, whom I saw on television. She had looked for a job as a journalist and could not get it. She went back home. She is now earning Kshs1.2 million, every three months when her watermelons get ready. She is so comfortable. She has already been called by the Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, to showcase her as a youth who can transform the other youths who are idle and wasting time. Agriculture can employ many people and feed the world. In Kenya, we can expand it because we have not even used 20 per cent of our country properly for agriculture. But when we say that the counties are going to do agriculture, then we should give them the money to do it. We are not going to do agriculture without mechanization and modernization. Where is the money to do that? I remember in his last speech the former President said that he is leaving, but we have to modernize and mechanize agriculture. How are we going to do that without money? If we are going to do agriculture, we need personnel. There were extension officers who used to tell people how to plant the hybrid maize. I saw it long time ago when I was a young boy. They used to tell us how to space the lines and how many seeds should be put in. Those are the people who changed our lives. They were withdrawn by the national government. They need to go back there, but who is going to employ them unless we give money. Who is going to look after our animals? The veterinary officer who used to come to our village every Tuesday - I remember very well and we could take our animals for injections - were withdrawn by the central government. Now everybody is a veterinary officer. Now everybody who has some animals seems to know how to inject them because there is no veterinary officer. You become a quack doctor for your animals. So, if the animals are expensive, as Sen. Wetangula’s, you can kill them because you are just a quack. Since there is nobody to do this job, we have to employ them. In my own village where we are still looking after those range animals like the Deputy Minority Leader’s place, we still look after them, they need water. The mzungus did some water pans 50 years ago. We used to call them tinga in my place because they were done by a tractor. Tractor is called tinga in my language. They have served us for 50 years. This Government has never done even one tinga. They have not even desilted the ones that we 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."
}