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{
    "id": 398810,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/398810/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 86,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "As we talk about water harvesting, it is very interesting that apart from our initiatives to harvest water from rivers, we have a very interesting scenario. For instance, with regard to lake water, the people who live in those regions are not allowed to use the water extensively. I am told of a very interesting scenario where the East African Community (EAC) agreed with a country that is thousands of miles away, Egypt, that stop us from using the waters in Lake Victoria. This country cannot allow us to use the waters of Lake Victoria. If you want to set up an irrigation scheme around the lake, their Government has the authority to come and stop your activities. This is incredible. As an independent nation, our people cannot have their activities controlled by another nation. If we pass this Bill, apart from the economic growth we will experience, we will experience good health. When people have clean water, waterborne diseases become a thing of the past. We will also have increased agricultural production which has been lacking in this country. It will also alleviate poverty and create employment and self employment, especially for our youth. We now have an interesting category of youths who are skilled, have papers, but are still not employed. This will also create a better environment for us. It will also give our wildlife conservation efforts some boost. As we talk about water conservation, we forget about our animals which die during drought. By extension, this will also sustain tourism which earns us a lot of foreign exchange. We need to look at, very critically, some of the protocols and agreements that were signed by people and the governments before us and those who occupied offices before us and entered into certain treaties without understanding the far-reaching repercussions of the treaties which are still binding to us, as a nation, and to the citizens of this country. We need to control this. Apart from the air we that we breathe, water is, probably, the second most important resource that sustains human life. We cannot allow countries that do not have this water resource to control the way we use our God given gifts like our rivers and lakes. Before we do anything in Kenya, before we have an irrigation scheme and before one draws ten buckets of water from Lake Victoria, another Government somewhere must have some say and control how much water we can use. God was not mistaken when he gave us those resources and denied them the resources. They have their oil that we do not have, but we do not control the way they can use their oil. This water is our natural resource and they cannot pretend, by any means at all, that treaties are signed to be binding forever. Treaties can be relooked into and broken when and if we think they are not benefiting our nation and citizens. We can withdraw. I do not know why we are bound by treaties that were signed 90 years ago between the colonialists and other governments. We are now suffering the consequences. As I conclude, it is important, as I stated before, that we have a platform that brings together and consolidates all the water policies in all the departments and Ministries into a national water policy that can be used by counties. This is a resource that we will not leave into the hands of the counties. What happens when we are told that at one point, Turkana County has the biggest reservoir of water and the county decides not to allow other counties to access it when 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."
}