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{
    "id": 518398,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/518398/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 295,
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    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "fate of public collection in this country. Before talking about what is going on with contributions of harambee, I want to make it specifically clear that we need to appreciate the contribution that the harambee spirit made to this country in the 1960s and the 1970s. We know that some of us standing here today have a word or two to say about the harambee contributions that made some contribution to our progress during those formative years of this country. It was until the mid 1970s, when there was one report called the Gachathi Report. This is the Report which allowed civil servants to participate in business and at the same time continue to be civil servants. For me, I think that was the time that I can put my finger on, that the inception and the start of corruption at levels that affect the economy came in. With the arrival of these practices that civil servants had access to public funds and at the same time the control at which they accessed these funds was highly there because there was no legislation to curb that kind of behavior. It was a very long time thereafter that any legislation was put in place. I can say that up to date, there is no legislation that curbs access to public funds without corresponding punitive steps being taken and that is why this spirit of corruption has prospered in this country. I can put my finger on two or three things that have contributed to this very strong force that is driving the harambee spirit. One is the wealth distribution in this country which portrays - and you can see it in the salaries of individuals in this country- that it is so diverse that you sometimes wonder whether one individual earning two Kshs2million and one earning Kshs200 live in the same country. This kind of distribution of resources exemplified by the salaries that are paid by this country, these differences in wages or earnings of people in this country obviously leads to the very skewed distribution of wealth. Therefore, the temptation of having to do illegal things comes in. Secondly, the other contributor of this vile of misuse of contribution in this country is the way we plan and organize ourselves to use or misuse our greatest resource which is land. The level of hoarding of land in this country from the very beginning is perhaps one of those things that has contributed to these alienated individuals who feel that they have the knowhow to try and survive on land but the land has been alienated in a manner that they are denied it. Land is an asset that Kenyans can use, whether they have education or not, to grow wealth. Unfortunately, the use of land in this country is still one of those things that despite the very much know how we have, we are yet to put a finger on how to use it. In fact, the land policy in this country, if we have any at the moment, is a land policy that is leading this country to a dead end. We should not have expectations in this country, if we are continually going to sub-divide land into parcels that are unproductive. In fact, we are heading to hunger and starvation as a result of the policy that we know very well is not going to serve us well or any better in this country. We should address the issue of land. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, opportunities are sometimes given to us in this country to address these issues but we fail to seize the opportunity to do so. In 2007, we are all aware of the sad history that this country went through and many people were displaced from their land and became Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). I thought we would have taken this opportunity, that we have people who are displaced, to place back in their land in a more organized way in a manner that they will benefit from the land. 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."
}