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{
    "id": 719280,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/719280/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 184,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Musimba",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1804,
        "legal_name": "Patrick Mweu Musimba",
        "slug": "patrick-mweu-musimba"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Deputy Speaker, Kenya has remained blessed and indeed we have been at the forefront of discovering the great sources like in Turkana of the largest aquifer in the world. To date, it is a discovery we made two or three years ago, and yet we have not made significant strides in terms of mapping it and how we are going to harness it so that our Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) can have hope that mitigation efforts towards drought will be implemented. We know that a country’s sustainability and indeed its security relies on food security. If we do not have water and are not certain about our food security, then we are facing a future where our incomes especially our foreign reserves are going to be depleted. We go marketing heavily to get money from tourism but bleed the same to importations. Lifestyle issues in terms of what we consume come into play. And you wonder so ably that water has to become the key focus, not just in harnessing what is underground but also seeing how we can harvest our water when it rains. How long can we maintain this by having water pans within every household? How do we get these small water pans in ASALs and ultimately how do we feed them into our big lakes? Lake Turkana has shrunk in size because of the high dams being erected in upstream Ethiopia threatening the very livelihoods of the people in Turkana, the way they live and how they may make a living. This percolates downwards to determine whether kids stay in school or not. This is a long-term security danger for this country. We need to look at this. This Bill ably addresses it. It is one of the first Bills that talk about the composition of boards by putting relevant qualifications on to the board so that you do not just say that we need a relevant person in the field of humanities. We actually have social scientists who would breathe life, address and project the current needs so that we do not end up saying that the we are going to import water or areas where water is prevalent become dominated by other countries. A case in point is Lake Victoria. It can ably feed the whole lake basin area and sustain food not just for Kenya but also for the greater Great Lakes Region. But, we are grappling with accords which were made over 100 years ago that you cannot tap into the waters of Lake Victoria for purposes of sustenance of our people. So, we cannot move into places which are within 200 kilometre radii. So, indeed, in having this Bill, we start forming a lobbying mechanism for putting together a pool of professionals who would address this particular issue; that would lobby Kenya and ensure that what is God-given here is actually utilised within our borders. If we move to our water towers, every time you fly over, say, Mount Kilimanjaro or Mount Kenya, it is worrying to see that the levels of the glacier caps are actually dwindling. The only thing you see is a huge desert at the top of our mountains. Indeed, our water reservoirs, the Aberdares and Kyulu Hills from our locality, are dipping in water levels and hydrologists have been moved into treating symptoms and not the problem; the problem being how to harness or do proper mapping. As we enact this Bill, I urge the House because we are going into a budgetary cycle, that this be among the first authorities to come into place and find enough funds to have a water marshal plan that will be enough to say how we will cover what is on top, on the surface and what is below. So that as we place a lot of emphasis on discovering how many barrels of oil we have, and right now we have already hit over a billion barrels of oil, this becomes a strategic reserve and we follow countries like Saudi Arabia in the Middle East where just a week ago they held a big conference to look at how green their economy is going despite having a lot of oil wealth percolating to them. They are projecting forward that the real wealth will be water and its utilisation, how we harness and how we recycle it. This will be within the ambit of not only meeting our Millennium Development Goals, but also in ensuring that Kenya reduces its debt 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."
}