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{
    "id": 721422,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/721422/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 50,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Kimaru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2072,
        "legal_name": "Anthony Mutahi Kimaru",
        "slug": "anthony-mutahi-kimaru"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Speaker. I would like to speak in support of what my colleagues have said and to reiterate that this country, first and foremost, belongs to Kenyans. We cannot give preferential treatment to foreigners in as far as land matters are concerned. We have a situation where in Siaya, as I have heard, 22,000 acres of land have been given to a foreigner. After being given those 22,000 acres of land, as is characteristic of some of those investors, they abuse the locals, pay them little and delay their salaries. When you come to a place like Laikipia where currently, over 1 million acres of land are in the hands of a few foreigners, many of those foreigners come in and start conservancies. That is why even, today, in Laikipia, we have a war and invasion by people who are branded bandits. Every time those people come over with their animals, there is a lot of grass in the mzungu ranch while the African has nothing to graze his animals. The African’s cows are dying. When those animals are put in the mzungu’s farm, the Government is fast to remove them and direct them to small farms belonging to the common mwananchi . We have drought in Laikipia and Samburu. I am amazed at times by our own people when they say that the mzungu is good to us because he gives us grass. Has he come with the grass from wherever he came from to give us that grass here? When we have that situation, where we say that they manage the farms well, why can the Africans themselves not be allowed to farm that rice and rear those animals? Are we incapable, 50 years after Independence, of running our farms? Those conservancies have lodges but they do not pay taxes to the Government. The guests who come from outside do not pay any money in Kenya. They pay all their monies abroad. Most of the profits from those ventures go untaxed because that money is not seen anywhere locally. I have a situation where there is a foreign company giving support services to the British Army; services that can be given by a local company. All the senior staff who are employed by Saab Group are not paid their salaries in Kenya. Those salaries are paid in Britain and elsewhere and they are not taxed. I have raised the matter with the relevant Government institutions, but nothing seems to be moving. I will bring a petition here to investigate those particular companies and, in particular, the Saab Group which gives support services to the British Army. Hon. Speaker, with your permission, the Departmental Committee on Lands of this House also needs to review those leases. If somebody was given a lease to do a conservancy and is not doing a conservancy then there is every reason to review that lease."
}