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{
    "id": 770942,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/770942/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 178,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Dr.) Oundo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13331,
        "legal_name": "Wilberforce Ojiambo Oundo",
        "slug": "wilberforce-ojiambo-oundo-2"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I come from a region that tried to embrace sugar farming, and a county that has been promised a sugar factory many years back but which has not been established. In my previous work as a consultant, I was involved in the report concerning privatisation of the five publicly owned sugar factories. This is a country that operates on discrimination and isolation. For many years, we have been told that the Jubilee Government would revive the sugar industry. Those sentiments are highly echoed towards election and nothing happens thereafter. People are left to suffer as they usually do. As I speak, Mumias Sugar Factory is almost on total collapse and yet for many years, there were many endless trips by the Jubilee leaders to the region, purporting to give the factory money for its revival. We have had many cases of managers being intimidated. Some have fled the country. As my colleagues said earlier, other sectors have benefitted heavily from investments. Examples are the coffee and tea industries, where loans are continuously written off and yet the sugar factories are never bailed out. Obviously, locally produced sugar is more expensive than imported sugar. This is indictment on our sugar production process. The Motion is timely and we request the Government to take urgent action, call a stakeholders meeting to look at the sugar sector as a whole. The people of Funyula Constituency wanted to venture into sugarcane production but the poor state of the sugar factory, and the sugar sector as a whole, has continuously discouraged them. The promised Busia Sugar Factory has never taken off almost 15 years down the line, yet we had been promised to have it established. The common story that comes out of the sugar sector is about the imports, the shut down and the endless blame game on exactly who is the cause of the problem in the sugar sector. It is time for the Government of the day to stop taking sugarcane farmers for granted. The sugar sector is being sabotaged so that some well-connected people can have a free ride to import duty free sugar into the country. We cannot continue with this approach because sugar farmers are Kenyans by right and deserve all the protection accorded to other citizens of this country. With those few remarks, I support."
}