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{
    "id": 720392,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/720392/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 227,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Letimalo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 68,
        "legal_name": "Raphael Lakalei Letimalo",
        "slug": "raphael-letimalo"
    },
    "content": "the concerns of pastoralists. The KMC is an old institution that buys and slaughters livestock for commercial purposes. I sit in the Departmental Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Cooperatives. Together with my Chairman and Hon. Wanyonyi, we visited KMC. Due to lack of maintenance, KMC is going down. The machines are obsolete. Workers go for several months without payment because of the low income generated from that facility. It is only surviving because of the funds injected during President Kibaki’s regime. It would have closed down. There is also negligence from the Government. During this financial year, Parliament allocated Kshs500 million for modernisation or rehabilitation of that facility. The Ministry now wants to re-allocate that money to another sector. That shows that the KMC is less important. In my view, this facility should be privatised. I am opposed to what the Leader of the Majority Party said. We should not privatise that facility. The facility should be rehabilitated and managed through a joint partnership with an investor so that it continues providing services to livestock farmers. Pastoralists from ASALs depend on livestock for their livelihoods. Every Kenyan household has some major stakes. Education is compulsory in Kenya. Every family wants their children to go through education. For a pastoralist child to pursue education from primary school through secondary to the university, his or her family has to sell livestock to raise school fees. For a pastoralist family to settle medical bills and provide food, money has to come from the sale and proceeds of livestock. For a pastoralist family to engage in any business, funds have to emanate from the sale and proceeds of livestock. As it has been said, the entire northern region of Kenya is being inhabited by pastoralists and it has been ignored because the main economy, which is keeping of livestock, is not being taken care of by the Government. So, there is need for the Government to improve livestock development, marketing and production so that it can benefit the livestock farmers."
}