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{
    "id": 767217,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/767217/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 207,
    "type": "other",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, lack of food also affects other areas like education. When you have malnourished people, we have a problem of schooling. Children do not go to school and even when they go, they do not do well. In the areas that have been traditionally marginalised, they will be marginalised further for lack of access to quality education. Where I come from, the issue of drought has caused a lot of problems because Taita-Taveta is considered to be a disease-free zone for animals and most people from different parts of Kenya take their animals there for fattening. Due to the scarce pastures, they end up grazing their animals in the parks. We have Tsavo East and West. When they do so, they end up displacing the animals who naturally are supposed to live in the parks and drive them to the homesteads of people thus increasing human-wildlife conflict. Human-wildlife conflict brings about issues of people who are harmed by animals in their homesteads. The animals go to the ranches and you may very well know that even the compensation is a problem for people who have been hurt by animals. To add insult to this wound, the people who are herding these animals have more often than not been in conflict with the residents of Taita-Taveta County. In 2012/2013, there was a conflict where herders who were grazing their animals brought them where the people were living. When the people removed the animals, the herders cut them with pangas in those homesteads. I therefore, dare say that drought and grazing the animals where they are not supposed to be grazed borders on being a security issue. This is because if the families retaliated, then it could have been a serious issue of concern. I am surprised that there is Kshs2 billion that was set aside to run the National Drought Management Authority and it has not been used for example to mitigate on the effect of drought and give the people food. That is again a moral issue. The Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government should facilitate the operationalization of this Bill so that the people can get assistance. Sometimes money is there but is not being used. During the electioneering period, a lot of relief food was distributed especially from the other side of the political divide trying to woo voters. I think it is good that we have consistent supply of relief food at all times whether it is electioneering period or not. For the case of Taita-Taveta, there are many things that can be done to mitigate on the effects of drought. There are water bodies such as Mzima Spring. I would like to urge the governments to facilitate the building of the Mzima II project so that the people who are suffering from hunger can irrigate their land and have more food so that the effect of drought and hunger can be reduced. We also have other areas such Lake Chala which can supply water to most of the regions of Taita-Taveta so that we can have people irrigating their farms and we reduce the effect of hunger. Most importantly, we need to have animals that are supposed to graze in ranches remain there. They should not be taken to the national parks because they then drive the wild animals to where people live, thus causing serious human-wildlife conflict. I support."
}