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{
    "id": 905665,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/905665/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 126,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof) Ongeri",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 124,
        "legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
        "slug": "samson-ongeri"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker Sir, for giving me the opportunity to add my voice to a very sad situation. In my career both as a politician and a student, I have never encountered a situation where water fronts are owned by individuals. It is a very strange situation. Even when you allocate plots, you can only allocate up to the front line of the waters. You cannot allocate plots beyond the territory of the waters. How an MoU can be signed and assign State resources to an individual to the exclusion of all the people who stay there; whose livelihoods depend on fishing in the lake is to say the least, very disastrous. Some of them engage in micro-enterprises and you are denying them that opportunity to earn their livelihood using the resources that are God-given. Even if the intention was to have a commercial venture to get the resources from Lake Victoria and in this case with the Basuba people who are also my people, it would only have been fair that a thorough Public Private Participation (PPP) be carried out and people share their ideas and agree on how these resources should be captured. This is indeed a case where the big fish are eating the small fish. That is a true metaphor where the big fish have invaded the small fish to extinction. I think it is a situation that this House can no longer tolerate or accept as valid. I say this because any resources that must be exploited from these water bodies must be to the benefit of the local people, the County Government of Homa Bay and also the national Government of Kenya. It should be done in the same way we have done with the Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Bill which is now an Act of Parliament, where mineral resources are being shared and exploited in a very sustainable manner. If you allow the Private Sector to just go into the lake, they will not even know how to preserve the species of the fish that exist there. They will just carry everything and deplete the lake of all the fish that will be required to propagate the population of fish for our consumption and for the sustainability of the populations around. Mr. Speaker, Sir, since this is an urgent matter, I urge my colleague, my neighbour and brother, to bring that Petition here and we prosecute it. In your own ruling, I urge you to relegate it to a committee that can pick up this matter because it is urgent. Thank you for your indulgence."
}