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{
    "id": 393725,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/393725/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 136,
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    "content": "a statement came last year when I was the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Works; the President and the Cabinet said that all the chairs for the National Assembly must be bought from the prisons workshop. And you can now see that the seats in the National Assembly were not imported from abroad; they were made here at home. I am still urging in this Motion that such a pronounced statement is given at the highest level to the Cabinet Secretary in charge of the relevant departments. His Excellency the President can actually announce this and we will see whether there will be any ripple effects; we will see whether people are going to get jobs. There are so many young people who are floating around jobless after graduating from primary and secondary schools, including from universities and colleges. Every morning as you come to your job, you find some along the roundabouts with flyers trying to sell products – and these are graduates with university degrees – and by evening, they get Kshs100 or Kshs200. If we go this way, we must go back and ask ourselves where did we go wrong? We must just stand firm and say we need to change things. I want to mention one problem that made some of our firms to close. Other than our inefficiency to purchase from them, the problem was the cost of energy, which still remains high in Kenya. Sen. Kiraitu was here; he was the Minister for Energy, and these requests were calculated and taken to the Government at the highest level for them to look at those comparisons. Why did all those firms I have mentioned close shop and are migrating to some of our neighbouring countries? In Ghana, the cost of energy is US cents 13 per kilowatt hour, and so many firms are really coming up there. In Ethiopia, our neighbour right here, the cost of energy is just US Cents 2.5 per kilowatt hour and, so, the firms like Sunflag – the one I have just mentioned here – have already put up a plant there because it is easier to operate there because their machinery use a lot of energy. The cost of energy in Tanzania is US cents 14 per kilowatt hour; it is 12.5 US Cents per kilowatt hour in Uganda. In Kenya, it is US Cents 20 per kilowatt hour, yet we began the firms which have just moved to our neighbouring countries. These firms have migrated from here because of our not being attentive to stand with them. If we introduce some urgent subsidy – which is not expensive and can be recovered – I do not know whether you heard in July this year, the Cabinet Secretary in charge of energy and petroleum announced that in the next four years, the overall cost of energy will come down to US Cents 0.08 per kilowatt hour. How can the cost of energy come down from US cents 20 to 0.08 per kilowatt hour in four years? That will be a major miracle that we are expecting to come down on earth! We do not have to wait to go and dig up the seven, 5,000 megawatts which is asleep in Silale Hills and Paka Hills in Baringo County and Nakuru County here for geothermal energy. We can begin as follows; do we need our people to get jobs? Yes! Can the Government then give subsidies? In return, people are employed and then you tax the people Pay As You Earn (PAYE) whereby if you get zero, you pay zero. If we want to keep using this left hand – subsidy – we keep from the right hand – PAYE and other taxes that we normally impose. It takes a bold step for us to say “I think we have lost it.” Otherwise, why do we have a lot of fabrics coming from China and India here? Occasionally they come and plant cotton here, they process it and then they bring it here. The revival of industrialization in those countries began because of textiles. We can beat 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."
}