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{
    "id": 719283,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/719283/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 187,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Oyoo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2408,
        "legal_name": "James Onyango Oyoo",
        "slug": "james-onyango-oyoo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you very much, Hon. Deputy Speaker. I am Onyango K’oyoo or Oyoo. Onyango Oloo is the former The National Alliance (TNA) Secretary General who left the party and is disparaging it. So, I am not the one. I take this opportunity to congratulate the authors of this Bill and say that it is very important and that it is coming very late, many years after all the households in Kenya were supposed to have water, a promise that was given by our good Government during the Kenya African National Union (KANU) era. I believe that Jubilee is an extension of KANU so they should have made good the pledge that was made by KANU, the party of baba na mama. This Bill, if passed, will give good direction because water is life as it has variously been described. We cannot have programmes that will enable Kenyans to have enough water if they do not have very qualified personnel and the qualified personnel are not guided and supervised by a powerful, registered and recognised entity. All the other professionals in this country have their very good associations. If it is lawyers, we have the Law Society of Kenya and if it is the engineers we have a registered engineers’ body that looks after their interests and also provides professional advice. I am saying so because the Government may have lost a lot of money. We are a country that is surrounded by lakes and rivers, but we have not made use of these waters which are a good gift because of lack of proper technical advice that is supposed to come from qualified personnel like the hydrologists. While the 10th Parliament tried to alleviate the plight of water in this country, monies were expended toward this through the Economic Stimulus Programme; monies that were meant to help the public alleviate this water challenge by digging many shallow wells in our various constituencies. I am afraid that this idea may have not become very fruitful. For instance, in my constituency, I was not there, but it is a nasty tale because many of those wells that were sunk have since dried up or are about to dry up. My observation is that they were done under no or poor supervision for lack of very qualified hydrologists who were supposed to give direction and supervision. I believe that once this Bill goes through and the hydrologists have a central body that will govern their registration and supervise their work, what we saw or what I have seen in my constituency will be something of the past. We continue to spend a lot of money on things that will not help or interest citizens of this country. I advise any Government in power today or in future to ensure that the public have basic needs. The mere minimum basic needs must be water. All efforts must be made to provide clean and safe water for consumption and viable use in this country. If you dare travel to the arid countries like Egypt and look at what they have done with their natural waters or that they have tapped from River Nile, you will not believe that although it flows more in East Africa, it has made Egypt a centre of agricultural excellence. We must have a Government that sends people for benchmarking. We also need to implement the reports when they come back. I believe that if this Bill goes through, we will engage qualified personnel who will give technical advice that can impact positively on the intended purpose of this Bill. That will go a long way to improve the living standards of citizens in this country. This is a good Bill that should be supported."
}