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{
    "id": 407620,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/407620/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 219,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mulu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1955,
        "legal_name": "Benson Makali Mulu",
        "slug": "benson-makali-mulu"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for this opportunity. I have actually been looking forward to this opportunity. I had to leave a meeting of the Budget and Appropriations Committee to come and contribute to this Bill. I rise to oppose this Bill and the reason why I am opposing is that many of the areas which I wanted to cover have been covered. So, I just want to focus on two issues. If these two are either amended or dropped, I will support this Bill. I want to start with the issue of the National Youth Council. When you look at that issue, what this Bill is proposing is that a Cabinet Secretary is going to appoint a team of officers who will form a committee and then this committee or Council will be having power to monitor and even control the budget of the National Youth Council. That is captured on page 944, S171. The question I am asking myself is: Why should an elected body which has been elected by Kenya youths all the way from the village, sub-location, location, district, province and the national level be put under an appointed authority? That does not work. It is like saying this House which is composed of elected Members of Parliament has an appointed authority which oversees or supervises our activities. On the basis of that, I cannot support this Bill. I think that particular amendment is not in good faith and this is one of the amendments I will be proposing that we either drop it or I will oppose this Bill. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, when you read through this Bill, it has very good things but to some extent we are giving the youth of this country a raw deal. Look at the whole idea of granting a Bill to a Kenyan, we want to take away that right and we know that in this country the people who get arrested most of the time are the Kenyan youth and then we are saying the police be given the mandate to actually take away that right from the youth. So, it means we will have a lot of our youth in jail. We cannot go and talk on their behalf to get out of jail and I think this is really unfair. So, when you look at the clause on the National Youth Council, I think we are being unfair to the youth. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, the other area I want to focus on is what we are calling the Public Benefits Organisation Act and this is relating to the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). When you look at this Bill the object is to make minor amendments. This particular section on the Public Benefits Organisation Act actually has ten pages of amendments and I am wondering. We have just been discussing a Bill on the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act which is even less than ten pages and it is a standalone Act. So, I do not really see why we should have ten pages of amendments to a particular Act and we are saying it is minor. To me, this is not minor and that is why I am saying this is another area unless it is dropped or amended, I will not be supporting this Bill. Let us look at the issue of this country. It is a known fact that during the previous governments, some parts of this country before we got the Constituencies Development The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}