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{
    "id": 884047,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/884047/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 341,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "At an individual level, I will take time to respond to each of the Senators on some of the issues that I feel they have not properly understood what we intended to achieve. One of the issues that kept coming up was who represents small-scale farmers. Kenya is among the top ten tea producers in the world. Kenya is unique because for the nine leading tea producing countries of the world, the tea is produced by multinationals. However, in Kenya, 65 to 70 per cent of our tea is produced by small- scale farmers. Therefore, that gives us a very unique experience, whereby, if we do not take care of this farming population, then we will lose our pride as a country. We come after China and India in terms of production. If we do not take care of small-scale farmers, we will lose that particular spot. Perhaps what many of my colleagues did not understand is that by the representatives to the Board being nominated by the county government, it has to be someone who will represent the interests of small-scale farmers. Somebody posed the question on how to ensure that the person who will be nominated is not a friend of the governor, who could be a large-scale farmer. Somebody gave a brilliant idea that perhaps we may need to consider the names before being nominated by the Council of Governors (CoG) and approved by our county assemblies. For sure, that is a good idea because occasionally even Members of County Assembly (MCAs) should be able to summon members of the Board to find out new developments at the Board level and share their concerns, so that when they sit at the board level, they can share and bring out the views of individual members of the public. There was also concern about the issue of funding. It is an old debate that never ends in this House about Article 114 about money Bills. Therefore, we could not introduce the money element at this point. Otherwise, that would have meant that we sent the Bill first to the National Assembly before it comes to this House. We removed the element of how the Board will be funded but we have it in our onward transmission notes. Eventually, after we are done with this Bill in this House, we will suggest to the National Assembly what model we want this particular Board to have in terms of funding. With those many remarks, I beg to reply. In line with Standing Order No.61(3), I request that you postpone subjecting this Bill to a vote until another time. I thank you."
}