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{
    "id": 722613,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/722613/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 314,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "As Kenyans, we should solve the problems that the pastoralists face in these arid areas. There should be permanent solutions to these problems. This problem has been there since Independence and is likely to be there even in the next decade unless we offer a permanent solution to it. Madam Temporary Speaker, as the Chairman of the Committee on Education, I strongly believe that the main problem is poor education offered to the children of this region. Whereas in Nigeria, there is transhumance education, in Kenya, most pupils will not go to class. They are left to wander in the semi-arid regions. Some of them will go without food. With that kind of negation, we have problems of survival and neglect. As a result of that, they are prone to quite a number of temptations from natural conditions. In the said regions of Kenya, the problems emanate from people who are recruited. They suffer and are faced with natural and artificial conditions such that they can bear any problem be it natural or man-made. This is what we are trying to address. The kind of recommendations here are; include the police, buy better weapons, build better roads and so on. However, I believe that the Government should take cue because the kind of education which is offered in these regions is wanting. Children should learn like those in other parts of the Republic. Noting that the semi-arid region in Kenya is about 70 per cent, we need to pay more attention to the 70 per cent just as we pay to the 25 per cent of the rest of the country. This is our country. We should, therefore, understand the problem. We thank the Government for developing better roads like the ones between Nanyuki and Isiolo up to Moyale and all the way to Garissa, Wajir and Mandera. Madam Temporary Speaker, besides that, we need to have established boarding schools, where the Government should feed children, provide medical facilities and a proper curriculum which could be different from what others learn here. Children should be taught to observe natural conditions and how to react to certain happenings in such areas. Children here and those in the rest of the Republic should be taught terrorists activities and how to combat them. These are some of things that even the UNESCO, in the Paris Report, has recommended; that children should be well inculcated to learn and understand what happens in some of these areas. That is what happens in Nigeria. In Nigeria, they know what is likely to happen, for instance, when rainfall is low. They know what it means to move from one region to another. They can adapt to different environments. They either move to the north in pursuit of pasture and water or run away from tsetse flies in the south. They are taught how to adapt to these conditions. So, in Kenya, we should teach this and make sure that children who are in the northern part of the country are aware of the environment that they face in pursuit of solutions to such problems. When it comes to pastoralism and more so, cattle rustling, it is no longer a tradition, they have to do it. It is so organised that animals are stolen from one region, taken to another region for slaughter and then exported. It is purely for cash economy. That can be controlled. Some of these people are known yet they are never arrested. Why are they not? They should be arrested so that these problems can be curbed. That is how we can solve the problems of the people living in the 70 per cent of Kenya which is arid and semi-arid. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}