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{
    "id": 784106,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/784106/?format=api",
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    "content": "behaviour, where at certain times we have abundance of food in one corner of the country, yet there is starvation in another corner. I visited Western Kenya the other day, at a time when we were talking about starvation in Ukambani and North Eastern, yet there were so many sweet potatoes and other food stuffs in Chwele Market and the surrounding places. One of the functions of this Authority is to monitor places where food has been produced in abundance and farmers do not have market. It is very sad that in some places farmers have produced and do not know where to take their produce, yet in other parts of the same country there are people dying of hunger. It is an extremely sad state of affairs and that is why it is absolutely necessary to have this Authority. Therefore, monitoring will be a key function of this Authority. It is also very sad that, at the moment, we have heavy rains pounding the country, but a month later, we will have drought in certain parts of the country. It is time we set aside the spell of this curse for us to learn. I am happy that the Senate Majority Leader has captured that very effectively; that it is not our rivers that will give us water for irrigation. We must learn to harvest water. Indeed, I would be happy to see all our institutions, especially the public education and health institutions, with facilities to harvest water. I do know of areas where children do not go to school, because they do not have water to drink, yet we have rains at the moment. If we could supply schools with tanks or install underground tanks to harvest the rain water, we would have water supply for the next six months. This Bill is also meant to satisfy one of the pillars of this Government. The President has said that as part of his legacy, he would want to leave this country food secure. The first of the four objectives is food security. This Bill is actually meant to create a situation where this country is permanently food secure. It is true that we have other existing agencies, and in the Committee, we have met all the agencies that are involved in food distribution and production. We have received inputs from the Council of Governors (CoG). Agriculture being a devolved function, I would like to challenge our counties and governors that it is not enough to permanently complain about money not reaching the counties, yet when it gets there, it is sometimes put into very useless infrastructure programmes. This happens when there are people who are dying of hunger. There are no agricultural programmes to make sure that the counties are food secure. I would like to see a situation where our counties are the ones at the forefront to make sure that water harvesting in our public institutions is done. We give them enough money from the national Government, but the tragedy, according to the report that we got last time, is that you cannot account for 60 per cent of the monies going to the counties. We happen to know what happened to them and it is very sad indeed. The essence of devolution was to get funds or resources closer to the grassroots. It is very sad that most of these things happen yet as they happen, we have the Senate in place which is meant to cross-check what happens on the ground. All of us know why we have that deficiency. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, in a country that prides itself of being agricultural, it is absolutely sad that a quarter of the population of that country is food deficient. It is The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}