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{
    "id": 732121,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/732121/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 79,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Maanzo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2197,
        "legal_name": "Daniel Kitonga Maanzo",
        "slug": "daniel-kitonga-maanzo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me an opportunity to comment on this debate on the President’s Address. One of the things the Jubilee Government came to power with, and it was a big promise, was the one million acres of irrigated land. In fact, the country invested a bit of money in it. I remember one time when the President visited Kulalu Irrigation Scheme with engineers and the people who were starting the project, he told them that they should not follow him to Nairobi immediately he commissioned the project. Some work was done but it was never completed. The Israeli Government came to assist. In fact, one of the things to make sure that water flows in that irrigation scheme is the Thwake-Athi Dam which is in Makueni. This dam has stalled up to date. Without storage of water, irrigation cannot be sustained. That river, once in a while after a long drought like the one we are experiencing now, dries up completely and you cannot get water at all. Therefore, we were futuristic. It was planned by the Kibaki Government under Kenya Vision 2030. The current President was a minister. He is familiar with all these projects which the Jubilee Government now claims to be its own. In fact, the Coalition Government put the country on autopilot so that most of the things they started would still go on even with bad management in future. For that matter, the one million acre irrigation scheme should have been spread across the country. We have many rivers all over the country, so that small acreage of about 100 or 1,000 would be feeding Kenyans today. Once you put it in one place, harvesting is expensive. No one can account for the harvest that was done in this irrigation scheme, who dealt with it, who sold it or who gave it to whom. It cannot be accounted for today. One of the biggest problems of this Government is accountability – being able to account for what the country owns. Kenya is a rich country. We have a lot of resources. We have coal which we are not exploiting. We also have oil whose exploitation has delayed. I believe if we mine our oil, we will do our budget because we will get Kshs20 trillion. Therefore, we will look like other countries which have exploited their resources, like Botswana. They do not pay taxes, school fees, or for health facilities. The citizens of those countries live well and happily. Roads are being constructed. So, we need to look for money to grow the economy. We have the resources. We have a lot of money around which gets lost through corruption. We have heard about the latest cases but no one has been prosecuted, locked behind bars and all the wealth recovered. So, we are losing a lot of money through corruption. This is what 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."
}