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"id": 936200,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
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"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": "These alternatives are very important. We must, upon passage of this Bill, encourage public awareness. There are people who may not know that there is such a law that can help them; or those who may not know that they can sit together, if you have disagreed, and say, “We agree to Sen. Halake to be our dispute resolution person; we submit all our facts and we abide by what she will tell us.” That way, people can get to know that it is not just the courts that can arbitrate. Equally important, is the simplification of the process, so that when you are going to ADR, form should not be a big issue. It is the substance of the matter that is important. You cannot be constrained that, “You must go to a local internet café and type your papers;” because you can even go and make an oral presentation. The person you have agreed upon to listen to you has a duty to listen to you, make notes and give you a verdict that you can live with. I know that in the villages, for example, you will find dowry disputes or burial disputes, where somebody passes on and there are two or three families claiming the body. You will find that wazee sit under a tree, and in two or three hours, they will come to an amicable solution, and nobody asks for pleadings. At the end of the day, nobody is told: “You will pay costs of this.” They just agree that wazee wakunywe busaa kidogo, namambo inakwisha; things are then resolved. This is how we must simplify our process of justice. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as the Senator for Nairobi City County, with the largest population of any county in Kenya, I am sure you encounter this every day. Every time I go to my office, I find people from Kayole and everywhere standing there with a file that used to be white and now it is totally grey or brown. They have been walking with it from person to person to assist them because somebody with money and influence has taken their plot and dispossessed the family completely. He or she has no money to go to court, pay a lawyer, bribe anybody or to enforce anything; they want you to help them. It is this kind of process that will help such invalid persons in our community; invalid in terms of inability to have money so that they can be listened to. Sometimes, even when they do not have a good case, being listened to is a sense of justice; that somebody was able to walk into the office of Sen. Kasanga or Sen. (Dr.) Musuruve and you gave them two, three or five minutes to listen to them, so that they are able to download their frustrations with the wheels of justice. I know that it is very difficult to deal with some issues that are going on in the villages. This Bill is very clear as it outlaws any alternative dispute resolutions in matters such as impregnating school children. We have seen, in some places, an adult impregnates a 14-year-old which is evidently a criminal offence and you cannot compromise on crime. However, the parents of the girl sit with the man because he has a bit of money and say: “We will just agree. You will marry our daughter. Give us a few cows and we end there.” That is concealing crime and such issues should never get into anything called alternative dispute resolution. This is because people who do such things do not deserve to live among decent people. 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."
}