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{
    "id": 416639,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/416639/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 23,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Katoo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 199,
        "legal_name": "Judah Katoo Ole-Metito",
        "slug": "judah-ole-metito"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Deputy Speaker. I rise to support this timely Bill and I want to thank hon. Sakaja for bringing it to the House. Actually, as the Mover said, the youth of this country; between the ages of 18 and 35 years constitute about 54 per cent of the population. Actually, that tells that Kenya is a country of a young population. I want to say that this is slightly lower because I had the privilege of serving in the first ever Ministry in charge of youth affairs, as an Assistant Minister in the Ninth Parliament. The statistics were a little bit higher than this; the youth were at about 65 per cent of the population. Most important is the fact that 70 per cent of that population has no jobs, while it is also a fact that they are educated, very skilled and well trained. Therefore, issues of education cannot be the reason why they do not have jobs. Hon. Deputy Speaker, there has been discrimination or sort of bias against the youth while they are looking for jobs; be it white collar jobs or contracts. Some of the biases against the youth have been the age and experience. You cannot get the experience without doing the job. You can imagine just a fresh graduate from the colleges and universities being asked to have five or ten years working experience. It is even happening right now in the devolved units; the county governments. When they apply for contracts, they are asked to bring their company profile. First of all, it is very difficulty currently in our legislative framework to form business companies. The environment is not that conducive. Therefore, when they are asked to produce their company profiles, several questions are asked like share equity of that company, years of operation, monetary value of the previous work done and so on. Surely, this discriminates the youth because they have not even formed those companies, they have not had a chance to do work before and the value that goes to previous work done is not there. Therefore, it is good that in accordance with Article 55 of Constitution, we bring such an affirmative action to special groups like the youth. 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."
}