Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 798103,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/798103/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 187,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "We have a very rich country in terms of raw materials. In counties that are in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL), many animals of pastoralist communities die every day but they have nowhere to sell the skins. The leather industry died a long time ago. We are, therefore, forced to import leather products whereas we can comfortably buy the raw materials – hides and skins – from our pastoralist communities and make very nice leather jackets and other products. We have a very rich country with so many minerals but we import almost everything. It is high time the President sat down with governors and had every county start a manufacturing company of a certain type. Counties should be encouraged to start these manufacturing plants so that they employ our youth. The President also talked of housing which is also important and we can have a population that can comfortably afford shelter and go to work in time. Here in Nairobi City in the morning, people who live as far as Kitengela, Thika, Kajiado and Ngong spend a lot of time on the road. They have gone to those areas to look for houses which are not even affordable to everybody. If you cannot afford a nice house today in Nairobi City, you have to spend a lot of money on cheaper housing in the slums or even very far from town. In the end, you would not have saved yourself time and money. Therefore, housing is a bright idea but we need to think about it for it to be of help to our country. That way, we will even employ our youth in the sector and earn counties money from the rent. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we cannot achieve the Big Four Agenda without skilled labour. I expected the President to talk about our academic or learning institutions. Talk of technical skills and north eastern counties, including Kajiado and Narok, do not have nice village polytechnics with skilled people who can build houses that we are talking about. One of my colleagues here just talked about unskilled human resource who cannot even address a simple mechanical problem in a vehicle. So, as we talk of housing and manufacturing, we need to also talk about developing polytechnics and technical colleges in counties. We are talking about food but in counties, agricultural courses are not taught in youth polytechnics which have so much population. We do not have these skilled personnel who can teach the community how to implement agricultural knowledge that can translate to food production. We need to address the issue of skilled labour as well as the quality of education in our institutions. We have a big problem in the universities. First and second year university students say that they have never been taught by a professor in those universities. Therefore, we are getting half-baked students. We are also not concentrating on who is teaching in our vocational training colleges. We have a human resource that is well trained and can train the skilled labour so that we do not import the famous Chinese labourers to work in the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) and housing projects. We need to employ our own who can also work well. Another great agenda is food security. We need to encourage our counties to look into how they can be food secure. Some counties were affected by drought. How will we address food security in another few months after the rains? Are we putting in place measures to enable them also produce food? There are counties that can only rear animals for beef. Could we also look at how we can encourage them and look for a market for them and make them productive? This way, we will not be in a situation where we are 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."
}