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{
    "id": 425341,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/425341/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 184,
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    "content": "is to make sure that, that one desired person, who is competing against himself, gets a tender. Those kinds of things cannot be condoned in the present day Kenya. Mr. Speaker, Sir, most of my colleagues whom we sat with have enumerated a very sentimental and emotional matter that we had to listen to, which made the people of Embu County face famine. You can imagine a county where the majority of the farmers are peasant farmers; people who till land in an acre and half-an-acre, and they are promised that they were going to be given free maize seed. This maize is procured using taxpayers’ money. The farmers line up and the person who comes to give this maize seed to these peasants is none other than the Governor. The process that has been used to secure this maize is completely fraudulent. There are documents which have been given to the Committee to procure the maize, including a research which says that if you plant this maize seed, it will have zero germination in this region. They go ahead to procure, but even to make it worse, the CEC in charge of agriculture says: “We want to procure eight tonnes of the right kind of maize seed.” The person who wants to defraud the people says: “We will procure 16 tonnes of the wrong seed.” All those people who come and get that maize seed go and plant it - you can visualize the image of that peasant farmer waiting for seeds to germinate for a month. The second month passes and nothing has germinated. But the worst crime that happened is that after all that was done, we inquired from the Governor and his team: “What did you do to mitigate this problem? Have you ever sat down or gone back to the people and said this is the solution or even a simple “sorry”?” The answer that we were given is that there has not even been one sitting concerning that fiasco by the county government. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we had to deal with evidence where a stadium in Embu was being renovated. This stadium that was being renovated was projected to cost Kshs50 million. But the tender was awarded even in advance, without ensuring that the amounts that are supposed to be paid are ready and given to a person. Even today, this stadium has never been put to use. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the long and short of this is: If the Senate, as the guardian of devolution, does not act right now, then we will have a situation in this country where no one else will say that devolution does not work, but the people of Kenya themselves. This is because if this is the kind of take-off that we are going to have for devolution, then it is only a matter of time that our people in this country are going to stand and say: We thought that devolution is our saviour; now it is not. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as has been said by my colleagues here, the affairs of the county government of Embu were not in the hands of the Governor. At the end of the day the question that rested in the hands of the Committee was: Who is in charge of Embu County? As I end my support for this Motion, I would like to say that every Governor who sits in this office must be ready to serve the people who elected him and this Senate must stand behind the spirit of devolution and the people of Kenya, who voted for devolution in this election. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I support the Motion. 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."
}