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{
    "id": 818552,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/818552/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 351,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Maara, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kareke Mbiuki",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 79,
        "legal_name": "Japhet M. Kareke Mbiuki",
        "slug": "japhet-kareke-mbiuki"
    },
    "content": "they want to be seen to be performing, but unfortunately, they affect the lives of so many other people. The chairperson of the KFS board, while in office, unknowingly, in contravention of the law and the Code of Governance for State Corporations, exhibited conflict of interest in doing business with KFS. The chairperson of the board operated a private hotel in Karura Forest. This was an illegality in so far as collection of revenue at Karura Forest by the Friends of Karura is concerned. It was supposed to be done by the KFS. This was violation of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012. Finally, the Committee observed there were various allegations labelled against the KFS board. Some members of the board appeared before the Committee while others did not. On the suspension of senior managers of KFS, the Committee observed that the suspension of KFS senior managers was done illegally and unprocedurally by the chairman of KFS board. Even with the purported suspension, the managers were not accorded an opportunity to be heard. There was also conflict of mandate. It was observed that the Kenya Forest Service, the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kenya Water Towers Agency had a shared mandate in the forest resulting in conflict of functions among the three agencies. On commercial plantations, it was observed that countries like Uganda, Vietnam, Colombia and Uruguay had embraced private commercial plantation, which with proper enabling environment and good policies which increase the forest cover in those countries, had attracted investment from the private sector in the industry. Finally, it was observed that one of the contributing factors to the forest degradation had been abuse of the commercial plantation under the KFS. There was need to borrow from the best practices in other jurisdictions towards conservation of the environment. Having revealed the oral as well as written evidence submitted to it, the Committee recommends the following: On issues to do with commercial plantation, the committee recommends that the Executive withdraws from commercial plantation and gradually converts the 134,000 hectares of commercial plantation into natural forest by restoring the cleared land with indigenous trees. Subsequently, the Executive should create new natural forest boundaries with Nyayo Tea Zones in order to create buffer zones. The Executive should provide incentives, enabling policy and other relevant interventions to provide commercial forest plantation in order to increase the forest cover and promote the timber industry. The Kenya Forestry Research Institute and the KFS should be adequately funded and supported to develop high quality indigenous and exotic tree seedlings and nurseries in order to restore Government forest land and to promote private commercial plantation. The committee was extremely clear. All this push and pull of illegal and legal logging is because of those 134,000 hectares which are under exotic trees or the commercial plantation. We recommend that the Government does away with the commercial plantation and instead restores that land with indigenous trees and leaves the issues of commercial plantation to the private players. In Kakuzi and many other places, you will find Kenyans or commercial entities having massive plantations of exotic trees. The Government should completely move out of this business of commercial plantation. On forest degradation, the committee recommends that punitive penalties be entrenched in law to curb forest destruction and illegal logging. The Forest Conservation and Management Act (No.134 of 2016) should be amended to provide for punitive penalties. Once this Report is The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}