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"id": 726792,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. Bunyasi",
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"speaker": {
"id": 2511,
"legal_name": "John Sakwa Bunyasi",
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"content": "good for mankind. I take note particularly on the Report on national security that I have had a chance to look at and I realise that the Government has many initiatives. Some of them do not as coherently put Kenya in the field as is put in the Report, but certainly, there is an attempt in each of these areas. However, there are some lingering issues that have not abated and it important that we looked at them. On the issue around petty insecurity, terrorism and corruption, unfortunately, these are issues that go to individual households of this Republic and there are issues even in the village. Even if you do not read newspapers or listen to Parliament, these are issues that they feel every day. If this had been tackled, there is no doubt they would, if they were sufficiently contained, lead to greater quality of life than is being experienced now. Governments exist to, through joint effort, deal with these kinds of issues. These are not issues that you can throw back to the citizens to individually take care of. That is why they have collectively allowed governments to function as a compact between them and the Government on their individual behalf, acting collectively, so that the citizens do not face insecurity. First, I want to comment on the insecurity chain. There are all kinds of aspects that are not working well. Clearly, there seems to be no quality coordination between citizens and the police service. Police service tends to be callous, overbearing and that makes it extremely difficult for them to extract accurate information that will help them to contain situations of this nature. These are aspects that the chain of security administration along the line in all aspects, from informers to county bosses to police station bosses, should crack down on the poor quality of services particularly offered by police. The net result is that citizens withdraw their cooperation. You do not know what is going on and by the time you get to know it, it is late. Therefore, you cannot have counter measures that would improve the quality of life at that level in the security chain. As it gets higher, there are issues where virtually you have to buy security. If you have some influence, we listen to you. If you do not, you are dismissed outright. When you break these problems down to the general dimensions of it, you would find that crimes that are related to gender violence, women and issues that affect women more than men against the poor are not as well taken care of. These little things accumulate at the national level such that when you look at the measures that have been put in place here, which are all modern, their effect on the ground is reduced. Secondly, I would like to talk about terrorism and counter-terrorism. Terrorism manifests itself in different ways. People can even connive to harm our citizens. They can be outsiders or from within. Terrorism seems to be thriving because it is floating in a sea of money. When tackling terrorism, it is important to carefully think about issues related to the way our funds flow around the economy, whether through our institutions or outside. These things do not need rocket science because if people are living beyond their means, the Government should understand why. Are these funds generated through a system that pays taxes, which means you can track some of it in the modern economy, or are they generated in a huge unknown informal economy that has billions of shillings? Money circulating outside the formal financial system can contribute to insecurity by virtue of the fact that it is moving untracked and no one knows who is holding it at what point. It is important to look at those aspects. I would like to comment on corruption. Frequently, corruption hits the headlines when huge sums of money have been lost by public servants. Corruption starts at the grassroots, and even ordinary people on the streets say that it is not wrong to bribe to get services. When we allow these things to harden the base core, they accumulate to the national level and we have The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}