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{
    "id": 962667,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/962667/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 309,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Gilgil, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Martha Wangari",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13123,
        "legal_name": "Martha Wangari",
        "slug": "martha-wangari"
    },
    "content": "Therefore, this Bill will look into those issues, especially the Children Act No.8 of 2001. Clause 157 clearly says a child to be adopted must be under continuous care of the applicant for a period of at least three consecutive months. That means, if you are not able to take care for three consecutive months you lose out, because you are not able to fulfil that part of Article 157. By having employers recognise that these are also parents, we will be able to open up and give more people the go-ahead to bring more children home. The issue of placement of a child is very critical. As I was explaining, the process is that when you have been counselled and the report has been favourable to you, they will look for a child that closely resembles you, for obvious reasons. That is what is called matching, so that that stigma associated with child adoption does not arise. You are not allowed to choose as an applicant. The adoption society places a child in your care after they have compared how you look as a couple. They will be able to give you a child that closely looks either like you or your spouse or a combination of both. That is how it is. The reason is that we do not want to give a scenario where people want to choose ‘designer’ babies. That is what they are called in the adoption world. Some just want very beautiful children. It does not happen. The Children Act is very clear. At the end of the day, that process does not take a day; it takes almost six months, even a year, depending on how the process flows. I got a lot of interest in this Bill and I want to appreciate the Departmental Committee on Labour and Social Welfare. They sat and scrutinised this Bill. They called for public participation. Adoption societies and adoption parents were able to present their views. What was very obvious and which they brought out in their report, is the need to balance between the employer and the employee in terms of giving breaks. I have also been asked by lawyers; I have one letter here from Anjarwalla & Khanna Advocates and they have shared their views that they feel the fact that we have put in the Bill just married women and men may be unconstitutional and discriminates against single parents from adoption. I tend to agree with them to some extent because most of the people who adopt children are single parents. There are rules for single parents to adopt. If it is a woman, the child must be 21 years younger than her. You must be an adult, at least 25 years and above. And you must demonstrate the capacity to bring up a child. The same applies to men, but of course more women adopt. Because more women adopt, more girls are adopted, because there are tougher rules to adopt a boy if you are a woman or to adopt a girl if you are a man, for obvious reasons. That means more boys are left in the children’s orphanages as we speak and they grow up to 18 years. Those are also societal concerns. This Bill restricts not just the process, but it opens up the issue of maternity leave. We want to make it uniform like other people who get children biologically. That is why we are saying women should get three months and the men two weeks. The issue of age is something that we will also consider at the Committee of the whole House stage. I want to confirm to this House that we do not want to leave it open. We want to say infants of one year and below so that we can avoid abuse of the process. When you are adopting a child of 10 years you cannot claim for maternity leave. This will apply for infants from six weeks all the way to one year as per the law. We must also look at the adoption process and make it easier. The Child Welfare Society has done a lot of work on churning out statistics, but if you go to Sheria House today, it is very difficult to get these data because it is mysterious. People do not find it conventional. People do not want to talk about adoption. People have stigma against adopted kids. They want to call them bought kids. That happens a lot. We must also protect the right of the child as per Article 53(2) and that data must be available. 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."
}