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{
    "id": 542777,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/542777/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 211,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Gichigi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1909,
        "legal_name": "Samuel Kamunye Gichigi",
        "slug": "samuel-kamunye-gichigi"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I am in some sort of quandary on how to deal with this particular report after the proposed amendment. I had prepared myself to support the report as it was originally moved but due to the effect of the proposed amendment, I have no alternative but to oppose this report as amended. The reason is that the intention of privatisation is to remove the Government from commercial activities but once we say that the main asset of the companies be given to the community to become shareholders, we have returned the same problem that we were trying to remove the factories from. If my colleague, Hon. Wandayi had said that farmers and the locals be given priority to own these particular shares before they are offered to any other person, I would have no challenges but when you say the community be given the land, it is not going to work. If it is what we did with, say Safaricom, where people were acquiring shares and there is priority given to a certain sector, I would have no problem with that but the idea is to remove the Government. You are converting this into another cooperative society which is going to be mismanaged because majority of the shareholders are going to be people who own the land. I have no problem with the locals owning the land. Two, I listened to my senior and respected Member, hon. Otieno Dalmas, he said that this land was compulsorily acquired. For compulsory acquisition to be carried out, land is valued at the then market value and a compensation is given to the people who surrender the titles to the Government. That is what happens. So, this business that this land was taken from the ancestors and that it should be returned to them yet the Government paid for that particular land, I do not understand it. I am having problems with that. Three, I was attempting to raise a point of order. You cannot come and say that the property that is owned by the Government, by the taxpayers of Kenya, should now go to private individuals at no cost. That obviously converts that particular amendment into a money Bill and you are not supposed to handle public property that way without a costing being done or a report taken to the Budget and Appropriations Committee which then brings the report here so that we understand the monetary implication. What have we just done by that particular amendment? Even if I am not speaking to the amendment, 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."
}