{"id":821340,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/821340/?format=json","text_counter":234,"type":"other","speaker_name":"","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Madam Temporary Speaker, customs are very important for us to understand. The mandate of the yet to be established ad hoc Committee is to look at three important things. First, it is why farmers have delivered their produce to NCPB and have not been paid to date. This is a matter that I would like to address first so that we can go point by point as I make my argument. I hope that this Committee, while investigating this matter, will be thinking about a permanent solution that promotes devolution. Madam Temporary Speaker, there is no reason farmers in Kenya should be sending their produce to a centralised position. It is about time that we came up with proper legislation and programmes that encourage farmers to form cooperatives so that they can store their products and set their prices to ensure that this country can be food secure. When you travel across the world – and Brazil is a very good example – farmers there come together to form cooperatives. With these cooperatives, they bring all their produce together and set up their own silos, storage and can then dry their produce. Why it is that in the year 2018 in Kenya, which is about six years after devolution, we are still talking about a centralised organisation called the NCPB? We should now be talking about farmers in Narok County having their own private – and I emphasize on the word “private” – storage facilities. Madam Temporary Speaker, the big problem we have is the concept of the big government. Worldwide, big governments tend to be bureaucratic, inefficient, intrusive and, in most cases, corrupt. This issue of farmers not being paid is because of this notion of big government. Let us now try to advance into small government. Small governments are very efficient and most of them are believed to be flexible. That is why we are in this House. As the Senate, we should be working towards ensuring that we have full devolution. There is no reason why our farmers should be subjected to such conditions where a few people in Nairobi decide when or how much they will be paid. Madam Temporary Speaker, the biggest problem we have in this country is that, sometimes, even when we look into things, we do not look at the consequences. Anything that deals with duty is not something which the current CS of the Treasury would just come out and issue a gazette notice. This is something which is controlled by the customs union. For him to waive this duty, he has to meet with his other five counterparts from the East African Community to decide that it is now high time to do that because we have a crisis. Madam Temporary Speaker, when investigating this matter, I hope the Committee will look at the first Gazette notice, which was only meant to inform the general public. That was actually an issue under the East African Community Custom Management Act and not under the Kenyan act. The key issues here are very clear. The customs notice is clear; it says that it is to notify for general information. It then continues and says to the public that:- “Pursuant to the power conferred to the cabinet secretary under section 114(2) of the East African community Custom Management Act 2004, in consequence of the declaration by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the 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."}