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{
    "id": 499119,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/499119/?format=api",
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    "type": "other",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the other challenge we face in our country is drug abuse. I know you are one of those who brought a Bill to say that drug abuse is a disaster to our country. We are saying that if the President can keep his promise that come 2015, we can have 40,000 to 60,000 young people going through the NYS. Let us not only concentrate on that, but concentrate also on rehabilitating them from drug and alcohol abuse. Alcohol is not only abused by young people; it is a challenge to many of us in this country starting from the youth to the aged. The productive population is this young group; if we can help them to come out of this problem, it will really assist this country. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, this is a beginning for the Senate. If we can take care of our young people and if we can have them trained, they can even come to this Parliament to take care of some of the things. We can then release our bodyguards to go and do other better things. When you look at Parliament as an institution in Kenya and you are talking about small arms, you get very scared. Just the other day in Canada, you saw what happened; it is something we need to be thinking about very critically. We have too many police officers here. Some of them can be released to go and do other things and we remain with only a few. But we should release these other ones to go and take care of the security of other Kenyans because I know they need them also. We should bring some of our young NYS-trained youth here the way students of Starehe Boys Centre used to go even to hospitals to assist. Today, if you take the NYS students and say “today we want to transform Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH); I think they will do a very fantastic job that we will always remember. This is because they are young people. They are willing and they feel that they want to do something useful for our country. It is only that we have not given them that opportunity, yet we are crying, saying: “these hospitals are filthy; dirty and so on.” These youth will help to clear these issues. So, let us not just use them in our hospitals, let us use them across the board. Let them understand every sector. I know they are the best in agriculture and you can even see it within their lands in Tala and wherever they are in Matuu and Naivasha. If you look at the NYS land, they have done a fantastic job. Why can we not use them to even go to these schools where we are saying that we have challenges of food security and yet we are not even starting that training within the school so that young people can get engaged in agriculture? They can go once in a while go to a school, start a pilot project for them and show them that this is how we do things. This will really help. For us in this Senate from the word go, we felt that this is an institution that can work for the young people. It can engage young people, it can remove them from being used by us, politicians, and paying them some small money to do dirty jobs. They can now do better so that when you see him or her, you feel proud that this is a young person who is also willing to assist you. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the other challenge we face today in our country is that whenever anyone does anything for you, the next thing is that they will look at you to give a token. Nobody is willing to do anything just from their heart, especially when they see mheshimiwa . It is a sad state. For us who are new in the game, we feel a bit sad. I look at our youth and I get the feeling that there is a symptom of dependence. How do I ensure that I give him or her something to move on without depending on me? So, for the last 10 years, the culture that our leaders cultivated in our people has really chained them. 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."
}