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{
    "id": 874376,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/874376/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 339,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Seneta",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 611,
        "legal_name": "Mary Yiane Senata",
        "slug": "mary-yiane-senata"
    },
    "content": "We also realised that in as much as we have a new Constitution in place which devolved agriculture, not much agricultural services have been devolved to date. The NCPB stores are not yet devolved and they are being managed by the national Government. Some of these stores – like the ones in Machakos, Loitoktok and Kajiado town in Kajiado County – are not known by farmers. We have NCPB stores that are possibly owned by private people because farmers are not using them, and they do not even know the people who manage them. Checking of standards of cleanliness in those NCPB stores is a non-issue to the counties because they are not devolved. The national Government, through the Ministry, is still holding the NCPB stores. We also found out that registration of maize farmers is not devolved. In Bungoma, we heard that a list of farmers who are not known there was taken to Bungoma from the headquarters in Nairobi by the national Government. That happened because counties are not registering their own farmers. The Ministry is still holding on to the registration of farmers. When we went to these counties, we also found out that the delivery, procurement and distribution of fertilisers is still being held by the national Government through the Ministry. The county governments are not mandated to procure the fertilisers. We also found out that the standards of the fertilisers is not checked. In Nyamira or one of the counties that we visited, we found out that they had fertilisers that had long expired. Nobody cares about the kind of fertilisers that the farmers are using because of corruption. In this particular case, we recommended that the county government be given the mandate over the NCPB management, supervision, registration of farmers and standards of those stores under the Ministry of Health, which is also supposed to be devolved. It is a high time that the NCPB be devolved, because they should be serving those counties. We found out that the NCPB stores are in every county apart from two or three counties. Therefore, the counties should be allowed to run, manage, supervise and get to know the person who is to deliver maize and other grains. The issue of the extension of the importation period was another careless thought by the ministries concerned and the Inter-Ministerial Committee. They extended the period without considering the fact that it had started raining, and that there were farmers who were harvesting food. Therefore, it is high time that the Ministry gets to know the time when they need to import, and that period should be limited. Importers should also be well regulated; and they should be told the quantity that they are supposed to import. The other mess that we found during this investigation is the issue of the KeBS. I believe that it is the reason why many Kenyans are suffering from different diseases. This is because the quality of the food that we are consuming is not well examined. When we visited the border post at Busia, we found only one KeBS officer, who had no single equipment and was just seated. That officer told us that they only do a physical check of the maize; “Tunaangalia tu magunia ya mahindi.” He was not even able to explain what they use or what they are supposed to check, yet this is food that is coming to the country and eventually gets into our supermarkets and on our tables."
}