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{
    "id": 941689,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/941689/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 605,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Ongeri",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 124,
        "legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
        "slug": "samson-ongeri"
    },
    "content": "It has taken a crisis to bring this report before Senate. Before that period of time, Senate never figured anywhere in the final resolution of this report, particularly on money matters. Let me say it without any contradiction that the public debt, after the Grand Coalition stood at Kshs 1.8 trillion. Today, according to the Central Bank Survey, it is at Kshs 6.2 trillion. Therefore, public debt as a ratio to GDP is over 50 per cent. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the fundamental issues we should be asking is that the majority side has had an opportunity as a Government to interrogate and to be able to give us an internal critique on how the Government finances must move and go. They normally do that through the expression or proposals such as budget proposals to the National Assembly and we only have a chance to debate it when it comes to Division of Revenue and also on the County Allocation Revenue Act (CARA). What has happened is that we have seen a “do not care” attitude where money has been borrowed and has been spent recklessly on projects that actually border on phantom lines. Most of the major projects have excluded the counties that we come from. I do not see any project for instance, in both Kisii and Nyamira counties that you can say, this is a flagship project that we can carry home. If I was to speak politics, that would be the reality of the matter from this side. I will be agitating for a position. It has come to a time when this must fall. Let me remind my dear Senator colleagues that through experience, a country goes through a social crisis. We have had very many social crises in this country. Sometimes, the social crises ends up in a revolution. I am not advocating for one. Countries go through political crises, and we have had such crisis during the multi-party era. In 1992, it took Kenyans to come together to solve the crisis of Section 2A of the Constitution. We had a crisis in 2007. Again, it took Kenyans to come together to find a solution to this problem. We had another crisis in 2017. It took a handshake to resolve this matter. Otherwise, this country would have burnt and would have been be on its death bed. However, because of the interest of a nation, the Republic of Kenya, one has to decide how to handle such crises that come before this House. One such crisis is the economic crisis. That is the third element that I wanted to bring out. When there was a meltdown in the United States of America (USA), it took both the Houses and the Executive to come together and revolve the meltdown issues. We obviously have a crisis in this country. The rate of unemployment has gone beyond levels we have never anticipated. The per capita income is in a sordid state when you look at it. When you look at the small scale industries in the informal sector--- I had the opportunity to ginger up the informal sector when I was the Minister for Technical Training and Applied Technology and the respectable name today of the Jua Kali sector . I vividly recall when the Bretton Woods institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) took a clamp down on any further borrowing by the Kenyan Government. We were unable to borrow from these institutions and any other institution internationally, because the Bretton Woods institutions had already put a clamp on"
}