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{
    "id": 720389,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/720389/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 224,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Seneta",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 611,
        "legal_name": "Mary Yiane Senata",
        "slug": "mary-yiane-senata"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this chance to contribute to this very important Bill. I want to congratulate my colleague for having thought of this important Bill. I want to urge my colleagues from all parties to take this Bill seriously. I would not wish to see anybody politicising this Bill. Livestock and livestock products - and mostly livestock keepers - contribute to the economy of this country. They also contribute to the amount of food that is consumed in this country. Therefore, to streamline this sector is a very important move in our country. At the moment, we are facing a very serious situation across the country in many pastoralist communities. Our livestock are dying because of drought and many people are now depending on relief food - which is not something we should encourage as a country. If we could encourage proper management and marketing of those livestock products, we would not be relying on relief food. This is the right time for this Bill. Many of my colleagues have just mentioned that livestock keepers are facing a hard time, especially in marketing of our products. Right now, there are so many middlemen in the market. The prices of livestock and the livestock products have gone down. For almost five years now, we have not been enjoying the good prices we have always been enjoying during some good rainy seasons. This has contributed to many livestock keepers becoming demoralised and running to other types of commercial investments that may even not be reliable in some areas. We know that in some pastoralist areas, you can only keep livestock because you may not be able to grow any cash crop because of water shortage or even weather. We need to encourage those livestock keepers by getting markets for them. I visited Namibia and Botswana some other time and it was very encouraging to see very serious structures being put in place by the Government to encourage livestock keepers to get markets. In our country, we also need to look at something we can do to motivate our livestock keepers. Just as one of my colleagues has said, a long time ago when we were young, we used to see the Government dipping our livestock. We used to see it drill boreholes for them. We used to see extension officers visiting them and giving them extension services for free. But today, livestock keepers are facing a very rough time because they have to buy medicine. Any kind of dipping, they have to do it alone. Those products are very expensive. It is high time we got the board in place. We also need to fund the board so that it can be independent and can do the marketing for the livestock keepers in this country. We also have to emphasise on the implementation of the Bill immediately it goes through. That is because there are so many laws in this country that are put in place but are not implemented within the Ministry level. I also want to encourage the county governments to pass this Bill and harmonise the same Bill within all the counties. As my colleagues have just mentioned, we also need to look into how we can also build some training schools for livestock marketers so that, at least, our people can also be taught how to do modern livestock keeping because of the change of climate that has hit our country. With that, I support this Bill. Thank you."
}