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"content": "fields or sugarcane plantations. It is agriculture which is a devolved function. The theatre of irrigation is the counties that we represent. The land, the water is in the counties, the farming and the activities will be in the counties. The crunch clause that led us to reject this Bill has come back exactly the same way it was. It is Clause 9. Our quarrel last time was that agriculture being a devolved function, we cannot set up an irrigation authority whose membership of the board is ten and only two are nominees of the Council of Governors (CoG). The rest are all national Government representatives who will not care a bit about the interest of counties. What we are trying to perpetuate is just create a situation where for whoever is in power, all the irrigation schemes must go to where he or she likes –where he or she got the highest votes. For whoever is in power, all the schemes will go to his or her area of representation. Without the CoG coming in to bring in equity for the people of Kenya, we are not changing anything. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I have no quarrel whatsoever with boosting Mwea Irrigation Scheme. However, what justification is there in putting a Japanese financial line of Kshs1 billion in Mwea Irrigation Scheme and Ahero is now a grazing field for cows? They are all irrigation schemes producing rice for the people of Kenya. The answer can only be simple, because one is in the area of leadership and one is not. That is not the way to go for this country. We want to see the CoG taking centre stage in determining how irrigation schemes are devolved, set up, managed and how we will produce food for food security in the country. We have the National Irrigation Board (NIB) which is now being given a new name; that is National Irrigation Development Authority (NIDA). There is nothing in this Bill to indicate that the rot and filth that we see at the NIB will change simply because we have changed the name ‘board’ and put “authority.’ It is same music, same dancers and same everybody. If we do not change the way things are done in this country, we are going to continue squandering resources and the people of this country will continue suffering. Mr. Speaker, Sir, during the campaigns, I had many opportunities to fly over the celebrated Galana-Kulalu Irrigation Scheme in Tana River. It is a sorry state. Billions have been sunk in that scheme and not a single harvest can be talked about from it. It is a big, monstrous fraud. Why did you not take that money to buy free fertilizer for distribution to farmers in Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia, Bungoma, Kericho and everywhere we have rain-fed agriculture? That way, we would have produced enough food for the county Why did you not put that money in small irrigation schemes in Kajiado, Narok, Makueni and in the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) areas? They had very grandiose ideas where they went and took huge chunks of land, put in money and hooked siphons to siphon out every single shilling that was put there. Nobody is being held to account now and nobody talks about Galana-Kulalu. I thought that the distinguished Senator for Isiolo County or Sen. (Eng.) Mahamud would talk about it, but they are busy running away from it and justifying why this Bill is good without telling us how good it is. Mr. Speaker, Sir, rain has been diminishing in this country. It is, therefore, very important that we have irrigated agriculture. However, we are not going to have irrigated agriculture if those who are designing it have personal gain, profit,nepotism, tribalism, 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."
}