{"count":1608389,"next":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=147736","previous":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=147734","results":[{"id":1495542,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495542/?format=json","text_counter":426,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"governments by the Constitution under the Fourth Schedule. However, the national Government also has a big responsibility. Therefore, part of what this Bill is doing is to give effect to the provisions of Article 186 and the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution to ensure that there is uniformity in the standards and norms of how we register co-operatives, and how cooperatives are regulated and supervised. The Bill provides for the management of all co- operatives under a good legal framework. This will ensure that our co-operative societies thrive because they are an important and integral part of the management of our economic affairs, especially at the grassroots level."},{"id":1495543,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495543/?format=json","text_counter":427,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"Many of us in this House are co-operators. In fact, I had the opportunity to dash to Kitengela over lunch hour to see part of the good work being done by the Parliamentary Co- operative Society (PACOSO). I know that Bunge Cooperative Society is also doing some good work. The PACOSO belongs to Members of Parliament, the lawmakers. I know that many Members are also members of co-operative societies back in the villages, be they producer co- operative societies or consumer co-operative societies. Many of us are members of cooperatives. Indeed, we are confronted severally by constituents who have issues with the management and the running of their co-operative societies. The members of the Trade and Industry Committee, who engaged with this Bill, will tell you that part of the problems that bedevil the coffee sector today is poor management of our co-operative societies in the sector. This Bill seeks to fix management and governance issues in our co-operative societies."},{"id":1495544,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495544/?format=json","text_counter":428,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"The Constitution of Kenya 2010 has given the responsibility of registering some of these co-operatives but many of them have allowed all manner of people to run co-operative societies and register co-operative societies. We have seen people being swindled of their hard earned savings by societies that purport to be co-operative societies or SACCOs and yet they are not. This is because they have no clear legal frameworks that would tell us how and who to register to manage a co-operative society. There are no governance structures to aid the management of co-operative societies."},{"id":1495545,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495545/?format=json","text_counter":429,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"This Bill seeks to give effect to all those provisions to ensure that the days of EKEZA SACCO are forgotten. We saw people in Kiambu and across the country being conned by someone calling himself a bishop. He used the church to mobilise people to join a SACCO called EKEZA and eventually took off with their money. The purported cooperative was being sold to people as a savings society. At one point, it was a housing co-operative while at another time it was a land buying co-operative. This Bill is categorising the four tiers of co-operative societies that will be there and stating who will license, who will register, and how cooperatives will be managed. We cannot allow anybody with a collar, calling himself a bishop, to mobilise church goers and tell them to join a purported cooperative for the church. There must be a legal framework that will stipulate how you register that co-operative, how it will be managed and the governance structures that must be adhered to. We have four tiers of co-operative societies, being primary co-operatives, secondary co-operatives, and co-operative federations. We have several cooperatives coming together to form a federation and purporting to be a federation of co-operatives. Equally, we have had officials of small co-operatives come together to form purported confederation of co-operatives only for those officials to swindle the primary co- operatives. It will not be possible for any group of people to do that once this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament and the law becomes operational. We also have apex cooperatives, on which this Bill goes into great detail. Members of Parliament and Kenyans will read the contents of the Bill and see how they are categorised. Who can be a member of a primary cooperative? Who can join a secondary cooperative? What is the membership of cooperative federations, and even apex cooperative societies? The Bill also creates offices such as the Office of the Commissioner for Cooperative Development at the national level, but also provides for offices at the county level. That is now clear in this proposed legislation. In the past, it was not clear whether the Commissioner for"},{"id":1495546,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495546/?format=json","text_counter":430,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."},{"id":1495547,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495547/?format=json","text_counter":431,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"Cooperative Development should supervise cooperatives at the county level, or if it was cooperative officers who were seconded to the county governments from the defunct Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare. Many of them were not even resourced by the county governors. Therefore, they lacked the capacity to even train co-operators on how to run their SACCOS. They were even unable to supervise those cooperatives to adhere to the law as it was before."},{"id":1495548,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495548/?format=json","text_counter":432,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"Part IV of the Bill provides for the registration of cooperatives. It includes the procedure for registration, restriction of registration of cooperatives within the same common bond, and limitation on names of cooperatives. That is critical. For instance, we have seen what happens with the PACOSO. At times, instead of drawing your cheque to the Parliamentarians Cooperative Society, you draw the cheque in favour of PACOSO. An ingenious person then registers PACOSO Cooperative or PACOSO Society and steals cheques belonging to the Parliamentarians Cooperative Society, which are banked in PACOSO Society. We have seen that. Many Kenyans and cooperative societies have been swindled through such ingenuity of criminal elements. Therefore, there will be limitations even on the names of cooperatives that you can register. You will not be allowed to register a name that is strikingly similar to another name. That is the kind of regulation that happens in the banking sector, and even in the insurance industry. That prudent financial management is now being brought into the cooperatives sector because the cooperative movement deals with people's finances. Therefore, there must be stringent regulations in terms of registration and who can register. It cannot be that any person can wake up on any day, form a cooperative society, collect money from people in terms of deposits, then three months down the line, they disappear with people's deposits. That will not be possible under this new law."},{"id":1495549,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495549/?format=json","text_counter":433,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"We have also seen the mushrooming of what were called land-buying cooperatives. People would come together, form land-buying societies, collect money, and buy land in some far-flung corner of the country where land is valueless. I can see some people smiling because they have been victims of some of those swindlers. People buy land that is often overpriced. This Bill provides very stringent measures on how those who register housing cooperatives will manage people's funds. If you want to register a land-buying cooperative, there are stringent measures on how to do so because there will not just be the categorisation of primary and secondary cooperatives, cooperative federations or apex cooperatives. The Bill also breaks down the manner of cooperatives that you can register, right from consumer, producer, housing, and savings and credits cooperatives. There are also savings and investment cooperatives. In the past, savings and credit cooperatives, which are the SACCOs, were also the savings and investments like those of us who are members of Safaricom SACCO and other SACCOs. I am a member of Mhasibu SACCO. That is because they are professionally managed, and have an investment arm that deals, for instance, in land buying and housing development. Many of the very well and professionally managed cooperatives have their investment arms. It is not possible even to register a cooperative under this law as a savings and investment cooperative. If you want to deal with just savings and credit, then you can have that. If you are in housing, there are housing cooperatives, producer cooperatives, for instance, for our farmers in the coffee and tea sectors that are producing. Transport cooperatives, in the Matatu and boda sector and Tuk-Tuk that has become very famous now across the country. In Kitengela today, I saw a whole street full of Tuk-Tuks. We want to organise so that those Tuk-Tuk owners can join cooperatives so that they are able to manage their societies better. As for the consumer cooperatives, it is important to have consumers form their own cooperatives to access cheaper commodities from producers. I do not want to belabour a lot of"},{"id":1495550,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495550/?format=json","text_counter":434,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."},{"id":1495551,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1495551/?format=json","text_counter":435,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Kikuyu, UDA","speaker_title":"Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah","speaker":null,"content":"the things that the Mover of the Motion, the Hon. Whip of the Majority Party has stipulated but allow me to mention this. If you look at the rights and liabilities of members under Part 5 of the Bill, Clause 45 of this Bill, it says that a member other than a cooperative shall not hold more than a fifth of the paid-up share capital of any cooperative registered in Kenya. Hon. Temporary Speaker, when I went through this Bill, it was a very important element of the Bill to me. This is because we have also seen individuals who form cooperative societies and they contribute their own capital. They probably own 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the paid-up capital or the share capital of that cooperative, then they invite other people to own about 60 per cent. But the 60 per cent probably own one share each, but the majority share capital holder becomes like a majority shareholder in a company. And that is not the essence of a cooperative movement. A cooperative movement, co-operators are supposed to be equal, and to have equal votes when they are voting. We have seen instances where people are able to micromanage the management and governance structures within a cooperative society because of the level of shareholding that they have in terms of the paid-up share capital. It will now not be possible to hold more than a fifth of the paid-up share capital of any cooperative society. If a cooperative society has Ksh100,000 paid-up share capital, then a fifth of that is 20,000 shares. Therefore, even those of us who are old Members in this House, Hon. Temporary Speaker, and members of Bunge SACCO and PACOSO, we must be careful. Mr. Mwita, who manages our PACOSO SACCO, must ensure that even yourself, Hon. Speaker, who has been in this House for quite some time, you do not subscribe to more share capital beyond a fifth. If that happens, they will be given time to rectify. Therefore, you can allow, either you increase the paid-up share capital of those cooperative societies, or convert part of that paid-up share capital into member deposits, so that no single member holds more than that. That is the same spirit, in the insurance industry and in the banking sector. People are not allowed to hold beyond, 20 per cent or 25 per cent shareholding in banks and our insurance companies, to ensure that there is proper governance within the finance sector. As I said, the cooperative movement is also part of a very critical finance sector in this country. Therefore, there is need for that restriction. With those few remarks... The Temporary Speaker (Hon. Farah Maalim): One second. Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah (Kikuyu, UDA): Allow me to second, and plead with Members to support this Bill and have it become law. The realisation of this Bill into law will, in a very big way, sort out the myriads of problems that bedevil our transport sector, and more importantly for me, the coffee sector. Without anticipating debate, we will be considering the Coffee Bill in a Committee of the whole House tomorrow afternoon. It would be very good if these two Bills—the Coffee Bill and the Cooperatives Bill—become Acts of Parliament before the end of this year. That would help the governance of our cooperative movement and producers. This Bill will not just affect the tea and coffee sectors. Its impact will extend to the milk sector. I believe even fishermen from Hon. Oundo's Funyula Constituency are co- operators. They need this Bill to become an Act of Parliament to enable them govern their fishing cooperative societies better."}]}