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{
    "id": 399423,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/399423/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 108,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Opiyo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1174,
        "legal_name": "Jared Odhiambo Opiyo",
        "slug": "jared-odhiambo-opiyo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Deputy Speaker. I want to rise to support this Motion and while speaking to it, I wish to indicate here that every year we have flooding affecting different regions of this country. I think of the Nyando Plains, Budalangi, Nyatike and, indeed, other areas of this country. For us in this country, flooding should now not be called a natural disaster, because it is something that repeats itself. It is a trend and the Government must take deliberate measures to ensure that it is a thing of the past. First, I want to say here that our country basically depends on agriculture and it is time to start developing irrigation agriculture. This can only be done if we envisage a situation where every region has got dams. We find that a lot of land in Kenya is arable but we are not able to practise agriculture because we still rely on rain-fed agriculture. I think it is time this Government developed a deliberate mechanism to move away from rain-fed agriculture by constructing dams. Hon. Deputy Speaker, in the recent past we have heard media reports that the Rift Valley lakes have actually burst their banks and they are destabilizing the ecosystem around them. One of the ways of controlling this unprecedented rise in the levels of the lakes would be probably to construct dams upstream so that a lot of rain water does not get into the lakes, or rather the water that gets into these lakes is controlled. This is so that the ecosystems still remain stable while the upstream areas also get water for irrigation as well as for domestic use."
}