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{
    "id": 516050,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/516050/?format=api",
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    "content": "their salary or income to support all loan defaulters and pay maternity fees for every voter who needs maternity services? It is impossible. Therefore, harambees have been abused. It has put a lot of pressure on politicians. It has actually been one of the biggest drivers of corruption in our nation. This is because the pressure that elected leaders go through to maintain and retain their seats is immense. People can just go crazy and lose their mind by the kind of pressure that is piled on you and your personal resources. I have heard it argued that to sort out this problem of too much pressure because of harambees, salaries of Members of Parliament should be increased. I differ with that approach. In fact, I dare say that even if the salaries of Members of Parliament, Senators and other elected leaders is multiplied by 100, that cannot be enough to sort out the demand for personal resources, especially through public fundraisings. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, in that connection, time has come for us to ask if this phenomenon of public fundraising is worth continuing with. I dare say it is a very worthy phenomenon. It is true that the majority of our people are poor and that small interventions by pooling resources together through the public can transform a village and location. If we can fundraise and have five children access higher education, tomorrow, there will be an engineer or medical doctor from that village. That can really help in uplifting that local community in the long-term. So, it is a very worthy thing that Kenya continues to have a system where appropriate, vetted, scrutinized and deserving cases are able to mobilise public resources for causes that are worthy. One of the things that this Bill tries to do and which is highly commendable is to make sure that we know who is fundraising and why they are doing it. We also need to know, after the fundraising, how that money is spent. You cannot collect people’s money, put it in some dark bag, disappear into thin air and you have no accountability to anybody. So, you must tell us: I raised Ksh3 million, I told you that we want to construct a social hall and two years down the line, we want to see how that money was spent and the social hall. Otherwise, it should be a criminal act. I appreciate what the Senators have said; that we need to strengthen the penalty section in this Bill so that if you take people’s money and divert it or misuse it, you should pay seriously because you are not only stealing from the public, just like bank robbers do, but you are blocking legitimate people who would have used fundraising as a worthy cause. There are always needy cases of dire medical emergencies which have to be taken care of by the society as we wait for universal health insurance scheme, which the Jubilee Government is working very hard on, to ensure by 2017 every Kenyan is able to access universal care. This will enable us stop fundraising for kidney patients to go to India, day in, day out. Again, with pride, I reflect on the great efforts that were made by Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o when he was the Minister for Medical Service alongside other Cabinet colleagues at that time to try and promote universal health insurance. That is a dream that the Jubilee Government has taken over. We are proud to be associated with something like this which can relieve the public from some of these burdens. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, education is another burden and as much as the Government is trying to do certain interventions to reduce the cost of education, as you 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."
}