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{
    "id": 645462,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/645462/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 221,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mulu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1955,
        "legal_name": "Benson Makali Mulu",
        "slug": "benson-makali-mulu"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this chance to comment on the State of the Nation Address by His Excellency the President. We are all aware that this is a constitutional requirement and we expect this report to be given a lot of seriousness in terms of the way it is presented to us. This report is called the State of the Nation Address. It is not a Government report. That implies governments will come and go but the state will remain. Those who want to see this as a Jubilee report are not on track. This is just to tell us what the state of Kenya is. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, what should inform this report is the Jubilee Manifesto and the Vision 2030 which is our developmental blueprint. It is because Jubilee is now in Government. I would have wanted a situation where we would be told how we are doing in terms of national targets for the number of years Jubilee has been in power in a summarised way. I will attempt to do that very quickly because of the time limit of five minutes. I take this honourable House through some of the targets I have picked and what has been achieved. Based on this, you can do your own assessment of performance of this Government. If you look at Vision 2030, this economy should be growing by 10 per cent by now. If you read this report by His Excellency, the economy is growing by 5.8 per cent. That means we have a deficit of about 4.2 per cent. What is the implication of that deficit? The implication is that all the other projected developmental activities will be slowed down by this slow growth. As a country, we need to take this seriously. If we want to grow at the expected pace and be where we want as a country, we need to focus on this economic growth. In terms of tarmacking of roads, I hear people say roads have been tarmacked. If you look at the target of the Jubilee Government through their manifesto, their idea was to tarmack 10,000 kilometres of road. How many kilometres have been tarmacked three years behind the line? It is 3,000 kilometres. That gives an implementation rate of about 30 per cent. Take another matter like the Equalisation Fund (EF). This Government should have released about Kshs18 billion to these marginalised counties by now. As we talk, nothing has gone to these counties three years behind the line. If you take the issue of medical equipment, the plan is to have all the 47 counties provided with specialised medical equipment in five years. Three years behind the line, we have only managed in six counties. In terms of percentage, that is below 20 per cent. Let us go to the agricultural sector. One of the flagship projects in that sector is the irrigation of a million acres. Look at what has happened in three years, only, 10,000 acres are irrigated. That is almost one per cent. When we talk about corruption, we are not nailing this down to this specific Government. What we are saying is when you look at the corruption index in what we call Corruption Perception Index, Kenya is doing worse. The question we should be asking is what we need to do to help this state so that we achieve low levels of corruption at the end of the day. On education, one of Jubilee’s flagship projects was laptops in five years. Three years down the line, achievement is zero. To me, if I were to score this Government in terms of performance, based on performance indicators not on politics, it should be less than a D+ (Plus). That is a fact. That is because there are clear performance indicators which you can average. Jubilee Members, you better take this seriously and see how you can move from a “D” constant to a “C” in five years. Otherwise, Kenyans are going to judge you harshly and you will be kicked away. 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."
}