Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 450255,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/450255/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 115,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "ultimate goal is to protect the consumers, then we can do so like they have done in Uganda where w aragi is not in competition with any other. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, if you look at the Bill, the same thing that we keep doing; the people who are supposed to be the ones testing under the schedule are only nine of them. There is the Government Chemist, the Kenya Bureau of Standards, Kenyatta National Hospital, University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Aga Khan University Teaching Hospital. What about Migori, Makueni and Tana River counties? Are we going to say that when alcohol is manufactured in those counties, it has to be brought to the Government Chemist in Nairobi? Here, again, there is no consumer protection. My cousins, some of whom are in Mbooni, are very famous for making alcohol using sugar cane yet in the Schedule, we have included traditional drink and we have said that it should not have more than 0.5 per cent alcoholic content. Who is going to check? What methods are they going to use in a village in Mbooni? There must be a standard so that we do not do what we keep doing as legislators; a public relations exercise, so that we look like we are working and yet we are not. If we are going to regulate traditional liquor, we must regulate it with a standard, otherwise we will end up doing what Sen. Kajwang has said and this business will go underground. If you go to what I call the “Valley of Death” somewhere in Mathare, you will find people manufacturing alcohol along the river. They prepare the alcohol from water which comes from sewers and everybody is watching. How are we going to regulate? I do not see some of those things captured in this Bill because we are assuming therefore, that what we need to regulate is the alcohol that is manufactured in nice looking packages. So, as Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o has said, we need a paradigm shift in the way we are going to do this if we are going to succeed. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, instead of having drinks like Countryman, Senator and the rest, I propose that even the drinks that are manufactured are properly registered and a gazette notice is issued. It is so difficult in this country to even register a trademark because it has to go to the Kenya Gazette, it is circulated, the notices are issued et cetera . We should have a register. One of the problems we had in Makueni with this is that the chiefs were asking what they were supposed to do with this drink called Countryman which had a Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) sticker. Do they need to drink it and die to confirm that it is poisonous? That is the problem that we need to deal with. Countryman is not a drink that is properly registered. Otherwise, then, we would know that it is a drink that should be consumed by Kenyans. I am proposing that we create a law that states that if you want to manufacture a drink, it must be tested and registered and then put in a Government publication so that the chiefs and the other people enforcing this law do not have an excuse to doubt the stickers on those drinks. We have the institutions which are supposed to check the production of these drinks. Everybody was saying that we should jail or charge officers from KeBS, but when people died in Makueni; when 25 people died as after consuming alcohol, they fired everybody under the sun, but they never touched the officers from the KeBS who had put stickers on that drink called"
}