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{
    "id": 814955,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/814955/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 100,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Eng.) Maina",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 75,
        "legal_name": "Ephraim Mwangi Maina",
        "slug": "ephraim-maina"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish to say a few words about this Bill. This country seems to have adopted a new method of giving services to the people. It also seems to think projects that are not talked of in terms of billions of shillings cannot work. Sen. (Eng.) Mahamud and I used to work in the Ministry of Water. Irrigation used to be done successfully during our time. It was a department within the water sector. Unless we manage water, no irrigation can be done. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I said one time that you cannot scare poverty by pumping in a lot of money. If we think by initiating, for example, a Kshs10 billion or a Kshs20 billion project will end hunger in this country, it will never happen. South Africa has a successful irrigation system. Zimbabwe and Egypt used to have successful irrigation systems. Maybe the methods they are using today are the same methods we were using in those years. Therefore, the solution is not this board since it becomes ‘top heavy’ where we are managing things while consuming resources and yet we do not have the tributaries to do the work. The solution will require engineers and agriculturalists to do proper irrigation. Let us look at our history. We have Mwea Irrigation Scheme, Kano plains and so on. However, none of them is a success story. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was informed the other day by somebody who used to work in the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation that our rice in Mwea is aromatic. It is better rice than most you get in this world. People buy rice from miserable farmers and mix it up with other varieties of rice. We need to relook at the way we are outlining our policy. The other thing I want to caution is counties have not already achieved what they have been asked to. Counties that are not delivering medicines into dispensaries are they the same one we are saying we give some billions to manage water? I will not be a party to that decision. Therefore, instead of having this board or commission, could we have a department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation as it used to be because it worked. We do not need to invent something new where things used to work. We all know the Galana-Kulalu Project collapsed. We do not know why it collapased. The truth is it collapsed because the concept may have been wrong and the management was not right. 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."
}