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"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556302/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Orwoba",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "I was about to ask who Sen. Paul is. Yes, as long as my time is frozen, I would like to be informed by Sen. Thang’wa."
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"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556303/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abdul Haji",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Very well. Sen. Thangwa, proceed."
},
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"speaker_name": "Sen. Thangwa",
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"content": "Thank you very much, Mr. Temporary Speaker. I would like to inform my friend, Sen. Orwoba, that I could have supported the Bill if there had been enough time. I love her campaign to end period poverty. I have seen the billboards stating, 'we are all a product of a missed period,' and I believe that is the right approach. By openly discussing these issues, we can break the stigma surrounding them. I wanted to inform her that for every girl in school to be supplied with the sanitary pads, we should support production of sanitary pads in the country. At the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI), which is a parastatal, there is a whole machine for making sanitary pads that was bought by the Government. Anybody can go there and learn. KIRDI is somewhere in South C. People are allowed to go there and see how those machines work. They should even tell you where they bought the machine, so that anybody who would want to produce sanitary pads gets a hands-on kind of training from KIRDI, then county governments, through the industrial The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and Audio Services, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1556305,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556305/?format=api",
"text_counter": 247,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Thangwa",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "parks programme that they are talking about, provide opportunities for anybody who would want to start that business. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I know Sen. Orwoba is well informed, but I wanted to inform her that if national and county governments want to end period poverty, we can do so by supporting grassroots groups. We should think of helping the women, whom we help through National Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF), National Government-Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) or any other alternative. We should stop going there with hair dryers. We are now giving them bicycles. We should think of coming up with machines that can help alleviate or remove such kind of poverty. As we help our people economically, we should also help them to provide these kind of products, so that governors can even give these groups tenders to supply sanitary pads to schools for free because they are supposed to be provided for free. No girl should buy a sanitary towel in this country. I wanted to assist. Let me repeat that. No girl should buy a sanitary towel, period."
},
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"id": 1556306,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556306/?format=api",
"text_counter": 248,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abdul Haji",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you, Senator. In future, hon. Senator, when you stand on a point of order to inform a Senator, it is not an opportunity for you to contribute. However, we have understood you. Sen. Orwoba, you may proceed."
},
{
"id": 1556307,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556307/?format=api",
"text_counter": 249,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Orwoba",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, Sen. Thang’wa has been one of the supportive legislators on this Bill for the longest time. The people of Kiambu should know that they have a champion of women’s rights when it comes to provision of free sanitary towels. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I want to summarise by painting a picture of what this Bill is all about if it passes and it is implemented. Right now, money is allocated by the National Assembly. After that, it is taken to either the Ministry of Gender, Culture, the Arts and Heritage or the Ministry of Education. In this financial year, it will be taken to the Ministry of Gender, Culture, the Arts and Heritage, which will then send that that money to the Women Representatives. The Women Representatives will procure those sanitary pads through their offices and distribute them. Distribution at that level looks like this. You get a supplier who has gotten a tender. Sometimes they are told to purchase, say, 90,000 sanitary packets of sanitary pads. I do not know whether you know what 90,000 packets looks like. It is very bulky. Once they supply, they dump the whole thing at the Women Representative’s offices. Sometimes the offices are not equipped to handle that kind of storage. Since there is urgency to distribute, the Women Representatives get stuck in mashinani to ensure that 90,000 or 100,000 packets are distributed as fast as possible because there is no storage and framework. Therefore, they go to the schools very quickly to distribute. That is the picture of how provision of free sanitary towels looks like now. If this Bill passes and it is implemented, this is how that picture will look like. Firstly, the national committee will sit down and determine the most vulnerable counties dealing with period poverty and period shaming based on statistics given. So, it will be driven by numbers and facts. After that, they will allocate money depending on the number of wards or schools. So, it will be driven by actual facts. Once that money is allocated to the county intergovernmental committee--- The county committee will be made up of representatives including all wards. There will be subject matter The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and Audio Services, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1556308,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556308/?format=api",
"text_counter": 250,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Orwoba",
"speaker_title": "",
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"content": "experts, menstruation champions and gender experts. They will sit down as a committee. Before the money comes, they will plan for a financial year. There will be a conversation about how much is going to be spent on advocacy and sensitization of menstrual hygiene. They will determine how much is going to be spent on actual purchase of menstrual hygiene products. They will also deliberate on the type of menstrual hygiene products because in some areas, there is a good uptake of reusable pads while in some areas, they use disposable pads. I was surprised to find out that in some counties like Kakamega, there is high uptake of menstrual hygiene products. So, depending on the grassroots conversation, they will decide as a committee that is independent from the national committee on what they are going to deal with. After that, they will procure items and go ahead to distribute. That does not end there. That committee will sit at least four times in a year. They will then come back because there will be monitoring and evaluation of the same. When they come back, they will prepare a report showing areas that they distributed and, for example, retention of girls in school or what was happening in the prisons. They will give a report for monitoring and evaluation. That report will be tabled to the national committee, showing exactly how money was spent. All these activities will be happening on a dashboard, where anyone can go and check that, for example, as of today, Bungoma County has received this much and they have spent this much on pads and this much on advocacy and this is how it is going on. There will be checks and balance, accountability and involvement of the grassroots level. There will be buy-ins in terms of products that that are going to be used. It will be not just be the Cabinet Secretary for Gender, Culture, the Arts and Heritage sitting in Nairobi and saying that they have received Kshs1 billion and they will procure through a committee in Nairobi then suddenly 90,000 packets of substandard or poor quality pads appear in Kisi County. That is what we are trying to get away from. Once this Bill is implemented, it will ensure that we start tracking the progress of ending period poverty in Kenya. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as I conclude, I want to thank all the contributors to this Bill. I am very passionate about this Bill. I do not want it to appear that since I am so passionate about it, it must pass. I just want to tell my colleagues, both in the National Assembly and here in the Senate, that we must pass this Bill, not because it is Sen. Orwoba’s Bill and not because it is the Women Representatives who are going to perform certain tasks but because it is the right thing to do. I can see Sen. Sifuna making some comments on the side. As I address you, probably I sound crazy. Like it has been attested, it is the craziness that gets people to stop and think and listen. As you pass by my billboard every day, including the ones that Sen. Thang’wa has talked about, just know that we are all products of missed periods, and that is a fact. We are trying to end the shaming. We are trying to make sure that conversation is normalized. I urge my colleagues to pass this Bill, not because they have daughters, not because they have wives, not because they sit in the Senate, not because they like or hate me, but because it is the right thing to do. In 2025, this is an era where no woman or girl should be trading her body or begging for assistance to buy sanitary pads or any menstrual hygiene products, so that they can go about their business in their workplace, in school, or at home. Mr. Temporary Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order No.66(3), I request that putting of the question be deferred to a later day. Thank you. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and Audio Services, Senate."
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"id": 1556309,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abdul Haji",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Very well. The putting of the question is deferred."
},
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"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1556310/?format=api",
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"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "(Putting of the Question on the Bill deferred)"
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"text_counter": 253,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Abdul Haji",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Hon. Senators, at this point, we will rearrange the Order Paper and move to Order No.13. Next Order."
}
]
}