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{
    "id": 955742,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/955742/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 591,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. This is an important Bill to the extent that tourism, under the Fourth Schedule, is a shared function. It is both at the national and county levels. We start from a point of lamentation; that in this country, for the last over 50 years, our managers of tourism have made Kenyans and the world to think that tourism is about wildlife and the beach. That is what they have been limited to. That is very myopic thinking. When they are marketing tourism, they only take pictures of the beach and beach boys, and then snapshots from Maasai Mara National Reserve and the Tsavo National Park. They forget that almost everywhere in this country, there is a tourism site. Examples include how maize is grown in Trans-Nzoia County, the caves in Mt. Elgon and the dry river beds in this area. Everything is attractive to human beings. Sometimes you go out of the country, like Australia, where there is just a small greenbelt along the coast; the rest is a very dry hot desert. When you go to a place like Alice Springs in the centre of Australia, just because of artesian wells which are equivalent to an oasis in the Middle East, millions of people go there. We have failed to tap our local tourism because of lack of broad thinking, so to speak, in those who design policy, market the country and those who promote tourism. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, many times when I was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, I would go to an expo and Kenyans would be there falling under the weight of curios. All they would be showing is curios made of wood and stones from Kisii County. Nobody is there to market anything. If we want to market our wildlife, for example, how come at the arrival desk at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), we do not even see rolling films of the Maasai Mara Game Reserve or Tsavo and Amboseli National parks? People in this industry are suffering from a serious mental block. This Bill will now open up. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you go to our counties - I am sure it applies everywhere whether it is Marsabit or Tana River - each county governor has a CEC is in charge of tourism and something else. I have called some in various places. I sit down with them and ask them what their portfolio is and what they do, and they have no idea. One told me that his duty as a CEC Member in charge of Tourism is to organize beauty contests. That cannot be something that you talk about. Nobody will come from Russia or China to see a beauty contest in Tharaka-Nithi or Bungoma. There must be some more and better products for us to market our country. Therefore, we want to change the profile. I heard Sen. (Dr.) Zani rolling out some very attractive descriptions of our tourism comparable to others. However, how do you explain? A country like France has no parks or beaches, but it attracts 72 million tourists in a year."
}