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{
    "id": 492314,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/492314/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 250,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Dawood",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2572,
        "legal_name": "Abdul Rahim Dawood",
        "slug": "abdul-rahim-dawood"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. On the outset, I want to support the Motion. I want to say categorically to our leader, hon. Member who has just spoken that Uwezo Fund money is not for buying meat and whatever she has just talked about. It is not that we are removing the money from the Women Enterprise Development Fund or the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. We are just supplementing for the older persons who are over 35 years old. Whenever we go for meetings of Uwezo Fund and others, older people always ask: “ Wapi pesa za wazee ?” We need to take into account the fact that we have a population of men aged over 35 comprising of up to 40 per cent of this country’s men. We are not saying that all the men should get the money, unlike what hon. Sakaja has just hinted. Not all the youths get money from the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. The Uwezo Fund money is not given to all the women and the youth in the whole country. Why should we put a bar when the Constitution does not do so? The Constitution says that we should not discriminate against any person on the bases of age or race or on any other basis. Allowing women as old as 90 years to access money from Uwezo Fund and barring men who are over 35 years from accessing the same Fund is discriminatory. That is the age when men become most productive – not just productive in terms of entrepreneurship, but productive in all other ways as well. The Seconder of Motion talked about people who fought for this country’s Independence. This Government and previous regimes have forgotten the people who fought for this country’s Independence. This is a way through which we can pay them back – giving them some money to engage in entrepreneurship. If not, we should at least give each one of them a piece of land. If the President is listening today, I hope that his Kenyatta Day Speech will make provision for this country’s freedom fighters. I would like him to give them some pieces of land because they are living in poverty. Once the proposed Fund is approved by this House, the people who fought for this country’s Independence should access some money with which to do some businesses. The other lady colleague talked about the cash transfer programme. The cash transfers are not enough, because the beneficiaries are people who are over 65 years old. This country has more than three million people who are over 65 years old. Not all of them can get the cash transfers of Kshs2, 000. What is Kshs2, 000 a month? It cannot suffice to do anything. This Motion talks about entrepreneurial spirit. Members of my Meru community are very entrepreneurial and so are members of the Indian community and those from Central Kenya. We would want all the communities in Kenya to be entrepreneurial. Making it possible for all the communities in this country to access the money would give them an impetus to invest and undertake some jobs that would assist us as a country. We have put too many roadblocks for people to access money from Uwezo Fund. Although the Fund has been in place for almost two years, we have not been able to lend out the money. I wonder whether if a new Fund is created, we will have similar bottlenecks as the Uwezo Fund, or it will operate like the former Kazi kwa Vijana programme, about which 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."
}