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{
    "id": 947536,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/947536/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 317,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "The kind of proposal that is given by our good friend, distinguished Sen. Kasanga, gives us a good platitude to understand all the challenges that this country continues to face. If we involve the citizenry more in establishing solutions to the problems that bedevil us, perhaps, we will make more progress than us sitting on the ivory towers that some of us sit on in the big offices that we occupy in Nairobi. We imagine that we can dictate policies for people living in the villages. We think that they are people short on wisdom and so, we have to give them proposals and tell them to implement a project and find a particular solution. That is not the case. I challenge all those who are in positions of power and authority that this is how to do governance post 2010 in this country. Article 10 of our Constitution talks about good governance and practices of involving the people, having them at the heart of decision making and appreciating that they know what is right and good for them. This is extremely important. Therefore, I laud our colleague for this kind of proposal. For us to eventually manage this issue of forest, we must involve communities that live around the forest in decision making and conservation of our forests. This is extremely important. Three years after the passage of the Forest Conservation Management Act, most of our communities, county governments and county assemblies have not interrogated the document. They have not sat down to appreciate the importance of the provision where communities are supposed to receive reports via their representatives. County governments should file, report and establish that for Kericho County, for example, how much of the taxes that were made out of the forests that are in that region were used to plant trees in the forest, pay the forest conservators or improve on the forest cover? This is because all we are getting, which is typical of us Africans, is obsession of how to squander the forests that are already in existence. That is a worrying trend. Madam Temporary Speaker, with this establishment that Sen. Kasanga is proposing to us, we shall identify a particular group of men and women of good integrity and have them sit in these committees. Let them be the people that take charge and give a special account of what is happening in all these community forests."
}