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{
    "id": 736583,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/736583/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 216,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Chanzu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 11,
        "legal_name": "Yusuf Kifuma Chanzu",
        "slug": "yusuf-chanzu"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for this opportunity. Members have gone through some grueling nomination process. It is a very queer timing where you go for nominations and then come back to the House. We used to go for nominations and proceed to prepare for the general elections. I congratulate those who won and encourage those who did not win to support those who won. I thank the people of Vihiga County for nominating me to be their Amani National Congress (ANC) Party candidate for the gubernatorial seat in Vihiga. There is a big problem about pricing. We repeatedly talk about the same things but I do not think we are able to implement what we talk about because we forget very quickly. Here in Nairobi whenever it floods, people die and we soon forget about it. We have never put in place long-term measures. In the previous regimes, we had Ministries that took care of some of these emergencies, but after the calamities were over, we forgot about what was affecting us. It is high time we put in place long-term measures in order to handle these problematic situations. I do not understand it when we talk about poor weather and yet we are in the same climatic zone as Uganda. I was watching television the other day and I saw that Kenyans living on the border can get food cheaply from Uganda and yet we share the same climatic conditions. We should not make political statements to just please people. That time the Government will have the welfare of its citizens at heart, we will be able to address this problem. The other day we agreed that the money for the National Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) could not go through the normal channel because of a court case. We agreed that the money should go to the Ministry for it to be disbursed to the constituencies. Instead, the Ministry called all the officers in the counties and the constituencies for seminars so that they are taught how to manage that fund. That expenditure that the Government has incurred by taking officers to attend seminars could have been avoided. These costs are all borne by the ordinary Kenyan because we have no other source of income other than taxation. We do not have oil or minerals. Immediately after the last general election the President talked about VAT. In the campaigns, they were talking of reducing the cost of commodities including foodstuff. Immediately after that they levied VAT on a number of items. The ordinary mwananchi is paying a lot of tax yet there is nothing he is getting. This is because they pay 16 per cent on everything they buy and yet they do not get any returns. Even when you give those boys in Lwanda money, they are not employed, but they pay taxes. This is a serious thing. Corruption has made everything expensive. There are too many middlemen and by the time an item gets to the targeted person--- A good example is sugar. The other day, the Cabinet Secretary, National Treasury, delivered his Budget Speech here and said that they are going to allow duty-free imports of foodstuffs and their prices would be low. Once the farmers harvest, what will happen to the prices? The market will still be flooded by those cheap imports. How will the farmers make a profit from the money they have spent on the inputs so as to harvest food crops like"
}