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{
    "id": 48055,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/48055/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 264,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Mututho",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 97,
        "legal_name": "John Michael Njenga Mututho",
        "slug": "john-mututho"
    },
    "content": "I would want to talk about wheat. This Government last year, or the last two years, subsidized duty and effected Value Added Tax (VAT) exemption of Kshs17.3 billion. But where is that food now? It spent Kshs17.3 billion and it was tabled in this House; where is this wheat? Where is this maize? The fact is that we still do not have that food. Somebody must be keeping it in stores. If you look at the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) stores, they are full. Who has filled them? Again, because of its carelessness, this Government has itself misused and abused resources to an extent that the people who steal from the same Government end up storing grain and continue playing ping pong with people’s stomach. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, food is therapeutic, and people who are not well fed are vulnerable to all manner of diseases and conditions. I want to say here that the food problem we have in Kenya now is as artificial as the energy sector shortages. What the Prime Minister did not say is that the 40 per cent itself--- This inflation is also cartel driven. This is because we have heard the Minister for Energy admit that the energy sector and the problems we are having in it are cartel driven. Therefore, 60 per cent of the inflation is driven by food shortages and 40 per cent by cartels. I want to talk about sugar. There is a report pending here for discussion; again we cannot go to the specifics. We only appeal to those people who sit in the House Business Committee (HBC) that for the sake of those people in Nyanza and Western provinces, the many Kenyans who are going to suffer, the millions who are going to miss school fees, please, allow this report to be discussed. It is clear there is something not just right. Even when we are being blamed for not being busy, we want to know what goes on with all the business. Why can we not have people have economic gain from their hard labour in the sugar subsector? Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is frustrating. My Committee took over one year to prepare that report and produced over 3,300 pages of the HANSARD. It is factual; let it be debated here. Let it be defeated on the Floor of the House; give people a chance. Those are Kenyans. I was just chatting with an hon. Member here and told him that when you sit here as Members of Parliament and start calling yourself PNU or KANU, as I do, or ODM, please, remember your payslip does not say it is 10 per cent Luo, 5 percent Kalenjin or 20 per cent whatever. You owe those people what you are supposed to be doing here. What we are supposed to be doing here is what is in this particular select committee report. We are supposed to tell Kenyans the truth; we have people here - I quote from Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s book, Ngugi Detained. He was describing this wonderful officer in charge at Kamiti Prison. He was comparing him and the conditionality he set before he could go for treatment. This is what he had to say, that he believed that officer at Kamiti Prison could not go to hell because he had committed more sins than Lucifer. Therefore, Lucifer would have difficulties admitting him there because he would claim leadership in hell. I believe those people who are allowing others to eat rats, those who have allowed people to eat cats, those people who have allowed very hard working Kenyans to starve in IDP camps are themselves supported by politicians and other power brokers and must face justice here before they face hell. We leave to God the issue of admissibility in hell. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, a few months ago, you saw Kenyans pouring down milk because there were no consumers. Now we have another report that Kenyans are trying to eat rats. You cannot balance the emotions, the economics of this country called Kenya, and the politics of it. Why do we have people pouring down milk at one time, and within a few months, you hear of people eating rats? Why do you have a six- kilometer queue of people willing to sell maize to this Government, and the Government not being able to buy the maize, and then you hear of shortages of maize? What economics? How do they calculate the price of maize meal? It is a fact that when you have a bag of maize sold at about Kshs2,300, the maximum price for maize meal should be Kshs76. How do they come up with Kshs100? Who allows these people? Price controls or no price controls, is cheating not a crime in this country? Is cheating not evil in this country? Why do we not have the civil society rise because of the millions of children who are going to sleep hungry tonight just because people made Kshs20 billion last year? Out of this whole mess, this year, they want to make shs50 billion and so on. We need this Select Committee. We need this Committee headed by none other than Mr. Namwamba to come in and identify these people by name irrespective of their tribe, party and I just miss--- I am not supposed to campaign but I am just forgeting that I was in that list. I, however, support it as it is, because I believe that each and every hon. Member here has the capacity, and we need to be told the truth. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, on vegetables, there is something called cow peas or kunde. If this Government was serious, it would have distributed cowpeas by now, and with the flash rains, people would be having vegetables. Again, this Government is in deep slumber. What do I say? Even in Kiambu, they produced fish the other day under the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), but now we hear that no one wants to buy the fish. This Government cannot streamline the market. People are starving on one side and eating cats. God knows that there are no more snakes to eat. They would be eating them too. I support this, and look forward to a very good report. Thank you."
}