Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 758023,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/758023/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 248,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Murugara",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13491,
        "legal_name": "George Gitonga Murugara",
        "slug": "george-gitonga-murugara"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker. It has taken quite a bit of time for your gadget to capture me, but I am grateful. First and foremost, I congratulate you for being appointed to sit in the Speaker’s Panel. We heard many accolades this morning regarding your credentials and the reason we believe we have the best team. Congratulations also for being re-elected by the people of Kibwezi East. I am a new Member of Parliament and, therefore, some of these processes are new to us. Be that as it may, I now go to the Motion that is before the House, which is on Approval of Ratification of the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement to regulate the use of the water of the Nile Basin. When the Nile is mentioned it does evoke some historical feelings, especially when it comes to Egyptians who notably have not signed this Agreement. Right from the biblical days when possibly they were using the Nile, when they held the Israelites in bondage, made them to fetch water from the Nile, made blocks which they used to build pyramids and those pyramids are their greatest tourist attraction, Egyptians have been benefitting from the Nile to the sole exclusion of other people. This Agreement which we are ratifying today so that it forms part of our domestic laws is good. We, Kenyans, together with the Rwandese, Burundians, Ugandans, Tanzanians, Ethiopians and if the Sudanese come to the flock, we can all agree on how to share the use of the waters which belong to the Nile Basin. Kenya may say that the Nile does not flow through our country, but we are part of the basin that feeds Lake Victoria with water, and that water is what flows out through the Nile all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The other point I wish to state is that once we domesticate this law, we will be walking out of the 1959 Agreement which was not good as it gave almost exclusive rights to Egypt to use the water. We will now have a domestic law which is binding on us and on which we can rely on when the Egyptians come to us to try and cite the old treaties. Therefore, I support that we ratify this cooperative framework and we should put it into use as one of our domestic laws. Water is very important. It is also vitally important that I have a discussion regarding water, especially for my constituency of Tharaka. Having looked at this framework, I am convinced that once we domesticate it, we can make use of it through the devolved system of government. The Tharaka Nithi County Assembly can come up with a framework similar to this, in which we would protect the rivers that flow from the upper riparian regions into the lower regions, into the Tana River and eventually into the Indian Ocean. If we do this, then we will have a framework where those citizens who reside in the upper riparian sections of the rivers do not use unorthodox methods of irrigation, like furrow irrigation, which are not authorised in the process draining away all the water from the permanent rivers and the lower zones. Basically this leads to my constituency of Tharaka ending up without water. Here we are called upon by our institutions like the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) to ensure that all the water regulations in the country, including the Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA)"
}