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{
    "id": 818586,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/818586/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 385,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ijara, PDR",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Sophia Noor",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 375,
        "legal_name": "Sophia Abdi Noor",
        "slug": "sophia-noor"
    },
    "content": "the pride of this country, the chairman runs a hotel. In terms of capacity again, we have very few rangers protecting our forests. We have one ranger who is supposed to protect 1 million hectares of forest land. Internationally, it should not be like that. The issue of abuse of licences by saw millers was a very obvious thing when we went to the field. Saw millers are given licences to harvest trees in particular areas, but when you go to the site, you will be met with great destruction of forest land. You will not believe it. They have destroyed forests. We have a loophole in our legislation. We need to holistically look at the legislation in place so that we are able to close the gaps that we witnessed in the field. When we visited various forest areas, one thing that was obvious was illegal logging. We noticed that there was a lot of charcoal burning in the settlements that have been encroached into, including the buffer zones. There has been a lot of mismanagement of forest plantations in our forest reserves. As a result, rivers and wells are drying up and water tables are getting low and all that has been caused by destruction of natural resources. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, the committee noted with concern the urgent need to address logging problems in the country, especially areas of Mt. Kenya, the Mau Forest and the Boni Forest, where I come from. People do not know that part of Boni Forest in Ijara, as a constituency, has more forest cover than the Mau Forest that we are talking about. We want to protect our natural resources. As a committee, we are determined. We have started. The 19 Members in the Committee have all started planting trees in our constituencies and beyond, so that we can increase our forest cover that has been destroyed by Kenyans. We want to be the best example as Members of this committee. I congratulate all the Members of this committee, who have taken that initiative. I know they have already started the programmes. The KFS, on the other hand, faces a lot of challenges. One of them is which I have already told you, about the small number of rangers in the country who are supposed to protect our forests. They are few. They cannot man our forests. Also, the technologies that other countries have are not in our country. We do not have good weapons even for their own protection. If you look at the houses the rangers live in, you cannot believe they are in this country. The other thing that they are facing is structural issues. There are serious structural issues within the KFS. There are serious governance problems in the KFS. It will not be good without us correcting that. We have given recommendations as a committee on how best to address the issues of serious managerial problems and the governance issues that have been witnessed. There are inadequate vehicles. If the rangers have vehicles which are in good shape and could be used in areas of their coverage, that could have helped. But we have old cars that can just move 10 kilometres and they break down. Inadequate resources is another problem the KFS is facing."
}