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{
    "id": 927794,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/927794/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 321,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kisumu East, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Shakeel Shabbir",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 140,
        "legal_name": "Ahmed Shakeel Shabbir Ahmed",
        "slug": "shakeel-shabbir"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Statistics is one of the very key tools of development and resource allocation. The first census that we know about was the Doomsday Book, sometime over 1,000 years ago. Based upon that the then king decided how resources were to be allocated. Resources are allocated for equity and not equality. That is why we have marginalised areas that need to have more resources allocated to them. The issue is data. As they say, numbers do not lie, but cooked up numbers are the worst. They not only lie but also destroy. So, what is very important is the integrity of data, the integrity of the process, the integrity of the institution, the professionalism of the institution and the integrity of those who are collecting the data. It is very important. We have seen the Cambridge Analytica and the false information, the false news, the false data that is going around. At this moment in time, we have people who are now being taken in as enumerators. They should be local. They should not be teachers. The youth are unemployed yet we are finding teachers with fulltime jobs taking on these things and getting paid. At this moment in time, the youths in Kisumu are going on strike because of the unscrupulous way in which the enumerators have been chosen. They are relatives of people. Unemployed youths and our university graduates have been left aside. They have been told “you are not going to get something if you do not talk to the Chief well.” Some lists have been put up already. My concern is the quality of the enumerators and the acceptability of that person who is going to come and count your household. Is he going to walk in? Is your wife there? Are your children there? If these guys have paid to be there, unfortunately, they are going to be trying to recover their money. I think that is the basic problem. The KNBS is a very professional and dedicated institution. It is underfunded. It is led by a Director-General who, incidentally, is the president of the worldwide institution on statistics. So, this is a great man leading the institution. In fact, what is happening is that, as they are trying, this is already being sabotaged at the local level. I am speaking about Kisumu. I know others have already talked about it. Although we want to align to reality, we want to align to facts. We need to do this properly. Data collection and storage is very important. The trail is very important. I notice that Clause 11 of the Bill empowers the KNBS to apply electronic means of data collection. Electronic means requires that there will be no forms. There will be nothing. There is no trail. You know how some of these elections we have gone through have been, where information has not been remitted or transmitted because you have to transmit through a Local Area Network (LAN), through Safaricom or whatever else. Now you know that these people are going with these computers and there is no trail. How are you going to say we have 20,000 people in Nyalenda when they are only 8,000? Who is going to deal with these things? This is what we are saying. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}