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"id": 741900,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/741900/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "June 9, 2017 SENATE DEBATES 21 Sen. (Eng.) Muriuki",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. Let me start off by thanking all the Members who contributed to this very important Bill. Let me tell Sen. M. Kajwang that the public participation is normally done in between the First Reading and the Second Reading. So, it took place. In fact, we did it twice for the simple reason because of what happened on the first Bill. This is the one this House rejected. We had the first public participation with various stakeholders who presented to us a lot of memoranda and so on. We, as a Committee, even ended up giving opportunities to specific stakeholders like the insurance industry and the Council of Governors (CoG) to make presentation. We wanted to mop-up as much of the views and suggestions as we could get to enrich this Bill. Of course, that does not mean that we agreed with everything. Sometimes, you will find that many participants in the public and the Government make almost the same suggestions about the same provisions. Therefore, the Committee has to analyze all suggestions. I must say that the controversy was very little in terms of the provision; it was much more to do about the board, who is appointing and so on. The provisions themselves, I would like to assure Sen. M. Kajwang and others; that I think that one has been done very well. Again, as I said, that does not mean that every view has been incorporated. It can be incorporated in the sense of that view and this view and so on. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, once this Act is in place, we will be talking of hundreds of billions of shillings. It is true that if the CoG and the county governments fraternity saw this and build this as the investment source of funding of choice, I think it will go a long way in also giving an opportunity to the county governments workers to buy shares in investment projects where, over and above the investment itself, they would also end up with some extra income out of the investment. Let me echo one of the speakers, I think Sen. (Prof.) Lonyangapuo, who cited the need for when somebody, unfortunately, for example, passes on, sometimes we have a lot of problems of beneficiaries getting benefits, school fees and so on. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, looking at some of these things, we realise that a large part of the problem is created by ourselves because you will find a person passing on and he never told anybody that he had three other wives and so on. Their children and ladies will suddenly show up and so on. The handicap has got nothing to do with the law; it is probably our way of life. There is the issue of workers who work for many years without a pension scheme of any sort. A case in point, cited variously, is the councilors who worked for many years. They would be elected and earn only on an allowance because of the system; there was no law to help them. Even now, it is very difficult to help them because they have to be accommodated through ex-gracia because the law does not allow. So, it is very important that the county government workers are taken care of from the onset. Last but not least, we are in the Third World; I believe there must be a second world somewhere. In the First World, pension is taken very seriously. I remember one time I was in a delegation of Parliament, when I was in the National Assembly in Europe. We were interacting with workers variously and at that time there was talk in Kenya that we are very heavily taxed in Kenya. However, we realised that we are not taxed heavily. People in some of those countries are much more heavily taxed because that money goes"
}