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{
    "id": 503399,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/503399/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 172,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Nyamweya",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 391,
        "legal_name": "Manson Oyongo Nyamweya",
        "slug": "manson-nyamweya"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me a chance to contribute to this Bill. From the outset, I will say I am supporting this Bill, but it has major weaknesses. The first one which I want to point out is the appointment of board members. It clearly states here that the Cabinet Secretary concerned will appoint six people who are not public officers. It does not say their qualification. It does not say their background and this is an institution we are forming and it requires experts. It requires people from various professional backgrounds. It is good that this Bill will go to the Senate for debate and the Senate will look at these new amendments. The challenge I am having here is that by the time we do all the amendments, the Bill will be like an old cloth that you have put patches on. It will make you look as if you have something completely new, which is going to be very confusing to most people. That is one area which is critical to me, and the drafters have not come out to say the people you will appoint. Secondly, I want to talk about funding for this Authority. How are we going to get experts? We are saying that the responsibilities this Authority is going to perform will require a lot of money. They require financial support but this Act does not tell us how this money is going to be raised. We are already complaining about the fee. That fee alone cannot sustain the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA). The fee alone cannot provide logistics. That fee is not enough for them to buy laboratory equipment; they will need equipment for carrying out various assessments. That fee alone cannot pay the manpower they employ; they are going to have very specialized people. They are going to have engineers. They are going to have scientists and so it is not possible to bring a Bill like this one without looking at how you are going to fund this Authority. You give them a lot of responsibilities and yet that is what they are supposed to do. At the same time, if you go to the Second Schedule, it contains projects requiring submission of an environmental impact assessment study report and change of land user, which of course, we have said here. What acreage are you talking about here? Are you talking about a peasant farmer who has two acres and has been disappointed by the poor prices of tea? Do you tell such a farmer that he has to ask for permission from NEMA before he removes the tea to plant onions or Sukuma Wiki ? What is it we are talking about? We need to come up with clear stipulations. You have to say whether this is commercial and not any other land. The Bill talks about many things including urban development, transportation, dams, rivers, water resources, storage dams, aerial sprays, forest-related activities, and large scale agriculture; all these things. It says that processing and manufacturing industries will need to go through this process before they are given a certificate. You cannot do this without a properly set system, with qualified manpower. You cannot talk about an organisation which is poorly funded yet you give it a lot of responsibilities. What they normally do is actually sit there and when you want an assessment certificate you talk to them to come and look at your place then they give you a certificate and you go. That is nothing because it does not give the proper image. That is why we have a lot of pollution. NEMA is in this country, yet Nairobi River is polluted, even though it was cleaned just recently. We have got many illegal structures which are coming up and 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."
}