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{
    "id": 904036,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/904036/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 89,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir. This is a very important issue. If you watched the developments around the infamous Ekeza Sacco, you saw what the owner, whom I do not wish to call a con but I cannot find a better way to describe him, did to millions of Kenyans who put in billions of shillings into that SACCO. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, many of our people are so innocent such that they imagine that any person who operates a SACCO business has gone through the rigorous Government processes of ensuring that they are legit and what they are doing is genuine and, therefore, they can invest their money. Unfortunately, the failure rate of many of our SACCOs in this country is so high. This is an issue that the Committee on Tourism, Trade and Industrialization needs to treat with so much seriousness. This is because cooperative development is squarely a devolved function. Therefore, time has come for us to ensure that we have proper regulation on how county governments can regulate the SACCOs that operate within our counties. Many Annual General Meetings (AGMs) of various SACCOs have ended in disarray with officials either frog-matched to police stations or beaten by members of the society when they read the statements of what has happened. Therefore, I urge my colleagues who sit in the Committee on Tourism, Trade and Industrialization to ensure that SASRA appears before them and first of all, gives an update of how many SACCOs have gone under to date. The only one that we have heard about is the Ekeza Sacco because the money is in billions of Kenya shillings. However, what about the small time SACCOs that are formed in our villages, where 200 people come together and within two to three years, they raise a significant amount of money but the treasurer takes off and disappears with the money? Who is regulating this particular sector? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, this is perhaps part of the reason why there is so much despondency amongst our people. This is because as a House of Parliament, we have not given the proper legislation on what needs to be done. I wish the Senator for Embu, Sen. Ndwiga, was here. I remember the amount of work he did during his days as Cooperative Affairs Minister. In fact, some of the regulations that are still being used are part of his work and what he left behind as his legacy. Unfortunately, some of them have been outdated. We have not been able to capture how electronic finances of SACCOs move. A person wonders which bank and regulations were put in place such that a person can move Kshs1.5 billion savings of members of a SACCO without being questioned by the Central Bank as it happened during the infamous Ekeza Sacco saga. If we had proper and stringent regulations, a person could not do that in proper investments arms where, at least, there is a chain. A person cannot have a SACCO with that amount of savings yet there are no checks and balances. For example, he or she only The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}