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"content": "respect. What people do is sit in backroom meetings and craft deals to make money, which is easy come, easy go. I want to encourage that we change our moral psyche. Madam Temporary Speaker, the Committee is suggesting that there should be a government administered natural resource benefits fund. I do not think this is the way to go. I want to ask the Committee to reconsider this because this proliferation of funds is what has caused many frauds in this country. You set up a fund, give it a bureaucracy; and that bureaucracy will then be mired in the usual Kenyan cycle of corruption. At the end of the day, you will have nothing to show for it. Because if you are talking of a situation where Kenya will probably be able to produce two million barrels of oil a day, even if you say this fund is 1 per cent, which is a huge sum of money; this is a sum of money that is unnecessary because if we had proper structures, we can administer the resources in a manner that is different from what we have seen elsewhere. One thing, Madam Temporary Speaker, that I would have loved this Committee to do, even as they have given us the report, is to remain seized with the matter because they will bring the Bill to the House. I encourage you to do comparative analysis with countries that have immensely succeeded in managing their natural wealth, like Australia. If you go to Perth, Australia, it is called the Mineral Capital of the World. They even have a university which is specialized in offering degrees up to Ph.D level on how to prospect, extract, add value and how to protect natural resources. You can also look at countries that I have already mentioned like Norway and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE is one such country where the oil production for a country of just about eight or so million people, they have a production of 2.4 million barrels a day. They are the second largest producers of natural gas and they have managed it immensely well. That is why when you go to Dubai, a city that was not there 20 years ago, now looks like New York and other major cities of the world. Those are good examples to pick. So, instead of creating the fund, we should create structures of managing the wealth in a structured manner that boosts the sovereign fund and where the money goes, it must be put to good use. This, Madam Temporary Speaker, brings me to laud the Senate for the Bill that is now law; that creates the County Development Boards (CDBs). The new Constitution emphasizes participation of everybody. In fact, I do not understand why our brothers, Governors, are grumbling. Counties were never meant to be possessions of any individual. Nobody owns a county government; it belongs to the people of this country. If everybody, as the Constitution mandates, must participate, then it is vitally important that we should stop behaving like hens guarding eggs against other hens and be open minded, be proper structured and allow others to give us ideas. As it was quoted here today, a good idea will always give way to a better idea; and a better idea can give way to the best idea; and nobody has a monopoly of ideas. So, when people come to work with you, you should look at the positive side of the value they are adding to what you are doing than jealously thinking that they are coming to diminish your space. If you have no vested interest in what you are doing at a personal level, one wonders why you should resist the support from others. 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."
}