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{
    "id": 439841,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/439841/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 226,
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    "content": "I have heard sentiments from those who sit in the Budget and Appropriations Committee that they had given NACADA and allocation. Being a member of the Public Investments Committee, which has an oversight role over NACADA, I can tell you Members that indeed hundreds of millions of the money that goes to NACADA goes to waste. About 35 per cent of the money that goes to NACADA is supposed to go into advocacy and that is what is stipulated in Section IV of the principal Act of 2010. The money was designed to go back to the counties of the constituencies and districts where this money is collected, but that 35per cent is given back to the District Commissioners who are supposed to conduct advocacy programmes. Since almost each and every constituency today has a district, you will bear me witness; I have never seen any advocacy work being conducted by the District Commissioners and Provincial Administration, as it were. It is these that I seek to correct. The funds are supposed to do substantive work that can help the people of this country who are suffering from Alcohol abuse. You can imagine, if in this country we had systems and structures that are functional, what would happen to the hundreds of people who lost their lives? I remember vividly reading in one of the local dailies about a lady in either Embu or Makueni narrating how they wake up at about 4.00 a.m. or 5.00 a.m. in the morning to go and drink illicit brews before the chief and the police wake up and start patrolling the area. Anybody who is waking up at 4.00 a.m. to go and drink; hon. (Prof.) Nyikal who is here can tell us that, that is a person who is sick. Until and unless we recognize alcoholism as a disease and not as a habitual leisure activity, we will not be able to deal with the problem of alcoholism. You realize that what killed people recently is not alcohol per se ; when the “Mututho law” came and we said we need to package liquor in a certain way and restricted the packaging to bottled packaging, many of our people abandoned traditional liquor; liquor like Muratina, busaa and even chang’aa. Chang’aa in the past never killed people in this country. But what is happening is because we allowed people to package all manner of drinks. People have started packaging chemicals and dangerous poisonous substances that are now killing our people. Therefore, it is important that we use the funds that we are getting for NACADA to educate our people on these other alternative traditional liquors. The final objective of this Bill is of course to recognize--- I can see hon. Benjamin may want to join me in the class of those who are not drinkers. I can say hon. Lang’at is Chair of the Committee on Finance, Planning and Trade. We also suffer from the problem of very high taxation on alcoholic drinks thus making them highly unaffordable to a majority of our people. As much as we want to encourage our people to drink alcoholic drinks that are hygienic and alternatives, we also have an obligation to create an environment where locally manufactured alcoholic drinks benefit from tax remissions or 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."
}