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{
    "id": 876511,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/876511/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 465,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Farhiya",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13179,
        "legal_name": "Farhiya Ali Haji",
        "slug": "farhiya-ali-haji"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Senator. This is what discourages Kenyans from working hard. To come back to my earlier point, if hardworking Kenyans are not rewarded appropriately, then this country will never develop, or whatever development we achieve, will be destroyed by any other subsequent elections, the same way we experienced during the post-election violence and the likes. It is because people will think that they will never get equal opportunity. What will happen to the minority, for example, who know that they do not have enough numbers to ever have their own elected as the President of this country? Do they not deserve justice and economic empowerment? There is also the case of women, who are not at the table when the resources are shared. The politics in this country is resource- based and the campaigns need financing, which most women do not have. As a result, they never get an opportunity to be on the table where the cake is shared. As a result of that, bad legislations are made that do not favour them, yet we have been told, in terms of the rural production, that almost 80 to100 per cent is done by women, but the economy of that does not trickle to them. The other reason I like this Bill is because there is a very clear criteria of determining the marginalized areas. It says: “The level of development in the area, standards of service delivery, basic goods necessary, realization of economic and social justice, level of poverty in the county and level of infrastructure in the county and such infrastructure--- Let me give an example that I always like giving. We are going to celebrate 56 years since our Independence, yet there is no tarmac road that links Wajir and Mandera counties to other parts of the country. Actually, before devolution, the people from the northern counties, including Isiolo, Turkana, Wajir and Mandera always used to say that they were going to Kenya whenever they were travelling to Nairobi or other parts of Kenya. This is because the people in those counties were so marginalized that they felt that they were not part of this country. This was because of the bad decision based on a Sessional Paper that was passed in 1964 that says the resources should go where they are produced. Who says the resources produced in the arid areas are not resources? They also have herds. This country should have taken advantage of the Middle East market to export meat. At that time, people never saw that potential in that part of the country. We could also export meat from the Maasai land and other areas where they rear livestock. Economic empowerment was only considered if an area was good in agriculture. To me, this was a skewed decision. Even now, most of the resources are going to counties where there is a bigger population."
}