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"id": 470124,
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"content": "the Lamu Port-South-Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Project (LAPSET),, the country needs more than Kshs3 trillion. That is our national Budget for three years. Somehow we know that if you implement such projects, Kenya will record a two-digit growth rate that the President mentioned about. I am sure that every county wants to have a double digit growth rate in economy. How do we get to that? There are two or three elements that I have come up with which I think can help this country look towards such growth. The first one is what I would call the National Land use Master plan. A national land use master plan would have to be developed on the basis of a spatial data bank so that, at the end of the day, we can track each and everything in Kenya spatially. What I mean is that as we stand here right now and start complaining about lack of a road in a particular area, too much development in a particular area et cetera --- Unless we do a national master plan of the basic tenets of industrialization, education and economic resources; everything to do with life, the planning part of it will be captured and we will be able to stop corruption which comes about when people do not know what you are doing under the table. With a good spatially based master plan, nothing will be and can be hidden. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the other issue which was raised in the Presidential Address is job creation. Job creation is a factor brought about because of a poor economy. If we are poor, then we cannot create jobs. So, the solution to job creation is to find a way of becoming rich. There are so many ways to become rich. One of the ideas I have is that Kenya needs to embark on cottage industries development. We can do value addition. Value addition is not only done in farm outputs, but it can also come in things that we see naturally. For example, where I come from, there is a lot of sand. You can add value to sand by creating items out of it. The list is enormous. Virtually, anything you see on earth can be made to be of value if value is added. If this is done at the micro-level, that means that our population will be busy working. Once they start working, the idea is to make money. If they make money, then the issue of youth unemployment will become a thing of the past. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I will now turn to our mandate here. This House, I have no doubt in my mind, is the Upper House. This House, being the Upper House, will not sit here and call itself the Upper House and not be seen outside this House as the Upper House. Right now, we are meeting here, but when you listen to the radio or watch television, you will not see or hear the Senate. When you do not see the Senate, the public does not also see the Senate. I wish we could embark on a suggestion that was made when we were in Naivasha; about creation of a public relations kind of body so that we start becoming visible. We got an invitation to go to Mombasa, but when you look at the way the letter is addressed, you will see that it reads; “Your Excellency”. I am sure that it was not supposed to be addressing us. If it is not addressing us and yet we are here and even our Speaker has not received any invitation, are we sincerely the Upper House? I am thankful that the President talked to us and even lived to his word. He gave us his word that he would treat us as the Upper House. However, other than the President, who else is treating us as the Upper House? We will go to Mombasa and the Governors who will be there will come with flags. Maybe some of them will be having two. Why should we be treated as second class Members when we are the supervisors and the ones 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."
}