{"count":1608389,"next":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=544","previous":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=542","results":[{"id":5421,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5421/?format=json","text_counter":417,"type":"scene","speaker_name":"","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Jua Kali"},{"id":5422,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5422/?format=json","text_counter":418,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Midiwo","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":184,"legal_name":"Washington Jakoyo Midiwo","slug":"jakoyo-midiwo"},"content":"business is supposed to be vibrant, or from Gikomba to make? What do you want them to make after you have imported pangas from Brazil?"},{"id":5423,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5423/?format=json","text_counter":419,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Midiwo","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":184,"legal_name":"Washington Jakoyo Midiwo","slug":"jakoyo-midiwo"},"content":"Hon. Wamalwa, this is one thing that I thank you for. You are making a good law and make it tight. If you do that, there will be no reason to ring-fence part of the procurement for the youth because there will be a market for us. Let people be creative. We are only trying to ring-fence because these people have nowhere to go, and they cannot afford to access the people who want to procure a pen for Kshs1,000. That is the reason; but if you create the market for them and stop the Government from buying things externally just to create a window of corruption, you will have such a large market that there will be nobody who will be left out just because they are young."},{"id":5424,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5424/?format=json","text_counter":420,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Midiwo","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":184,"legal_name":"Washington Jakoyo Midiwo","slug":"jakoyo-midiwo"},"content":"Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, now the Government has done very well. They have supplied electricity to just about every market across the country. I want to thank the Ministry of Energy for that, but what good is electricity if we cannot use it to make a living? It is not good enough. Therefore, I want to plead with you, hon. Wamalwa, to make it impossible in law for the Government to fail to invest the budgetary allocations we give it twice every 12 months locally. We are exporting our budgetary money while our jua kali people, a majority of whom are the youth, are without a place to turn to. I want to see that because I know you are capable of doing that."},{"id":5425,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5425/?format=json","text_counter":421,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Midiwo","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":184,"legal_name":"Washington Jakoyo Midiwo","slug":"jakoyo-midiwo"},"content":"Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I also want to say that in law, we must do something to stop the procurement review board from being a place that people run to stop procurement if they cannot perform. It is a place where people go to delay things. There is need for sanctions against those people who ran to that board for frivolous reasons. You should not run just to stop so-and-so from getting a procurement order. Those are things which we need to stop in law."},{"id":5426,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5426/?format=json","text_counter":422,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Midiwo","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":184,"legal_name":"Washington Jakoyo Midiwo","slug":"jakoyo-midiwo"},"content":"Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, therefore, with those very many remarks, I want to plead with my brother Eugene to consider the discrimination which he would create just because he had an idea put across by hon. Kimunya; that, to me, is not the way to go. That limits and creates reverse discrimination. Let us force the Government. The Government has so much money that if we bought locally, there would be no reason---. The Government will be supplying the money and the goods will be there for it to buy. If we did this, we will not have people beyond 35 years of age saying that they have nowhere to turn to. Also the very major point which I was trying to think of, and which has been put across by hon. Kimunya is; what procurements are singular in nature? You do not want to create a mess by trying to legislate. You do not want legislation that makes it worse for our people. You will get so-and-so who has the capacity forming several companies and getting contracts. They will still go to the same people because they have the capacity and they are often very corrupt. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to inform hon. Eugene Wamalwa that procurement in roads, which I was almost forgetting, involves corrupt road contractors, who must be stopped from fleecing our people. Right now it is raining and the country has no roads. I said something last week and some people said I was using politics. I said that it is only one contractor who is always given the tender to do the Kisumu-Busia Road. This guy was on that road nine months ago, and now around Chulaimbo, the road is impassable. As soon as you go beyond the Sidindi-Rang’ala-Busia stretch, you cannot drive fast on that road. It takes four hours to drive from Busia to Kisumu, just because one contractor must be given the job. I want to say that I called the Minister and the PS last week. I also wrote to them and told them that if they gave that contract to M/s Hayer, I would go to court because it is not fair to our people. It is all over our country. We must use this Bill to stop corruption in procurement in the Roads Ministry once and for all, and we will be coming up with a raft of amendments. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I thank you."},{"id":5427,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5427/?format=json","text_counter":423,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Baiya","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":8,"legal_name":"Peter Njoroge Baiya","slug":"peter-baiya"},"content":"Thank you, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me this opportunity to also contribute to this very important Bill. I would also want to thank hon. Eugene Wamalwa for bringing in this suggestion. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the gist of the amendments as proposed makes a lot of sense, in that it is actually an attempt to intervene in favour of a section of society which for many years has been neglected, or has actually been left out. Indeed, when you look at the result of allowing open operations, it is that the best players take all, so to speak. The end result is that only some few competitors become eligible and actually enhance their capacity to compete even more, thereby excluding from business the rest of the players or citizens. Therefore, I can very well understand the spirit of this Bill. It is a recognition that there is a lot of unfairness and substantial inequality among those who actually attempt to compete for various procurement jobs, yet by their very nature most of the contracts arise as a result of the employment of public resources. Therefore, the Government has an obligation not only to enhance the collective interest by giving to the most competitive, but also to nurture and enhance the competitiveness, especially of the young ones."},{"id":5428,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5428/?format=json","text_counter":424,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Baiya","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":8,"legal_name":"Peter Njoroge Baiya","slug":"peter-baiya"},"content":"Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I have listened attentively to the arguments by my colleagues, including those by hon. Kimunya and his concern about the possible objections to this kind of amendments, on the grounds of discrimination. I would answer by saying that the Constitution itself does, indeed, anticipate discrimination. Nowhere is it said that discrimination is outlawed. Indeed, when the Constitution says that there will be minimum gender balancing – at least one-third – when you try to apply that, what you really end up doing is actually discriminating. You resort to discrimination to achieve the result prescribed by the Constitution. So, what is being proposed by hon. Wamalwa is only one more criteria. It may have a discriminative role, but this is legitimate discrimination to bring up a section of citizens who have been disadvantaged. I am very sure that if there was any legitimacy in what he was possibly arguing, that is also taken care of to the extent of his argument that some of the youth are well off. I would like to say that most of the well off youth are, first of all, in the minority. By and large, if there is any injustice across the generational divide, it is actually against the young people. They experience unemployment most of the time. They are also subjected to other criteria such as experience. They actually suffer from all manner of disadvantages. They have not had ample time to accumulate stocks of capital as their older competitors do. Indeed, one of the questions they have always asked is: “If experience or capital is one of the conditions, where are we the young people expected really to go?”"},{"id":5429,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5429/?format=json","text_counter":425,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Baiya","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":8,"legal_name":"Peter Njoroge Baiya","slug":"peter-baiya"},"content":"Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this kind of legislation, therefore, seeks to assure the young people in this country that they are being recognized, are entitled to participate and we owe them a responsibility. I am sure that no court would seek to challenge this because it is part of the affirmative action, indeed, anticipated under the Constitution. The youth can even be recognized as a marginalized category to the extent that when it comes to sharing, they suffer great disadvantage. They are to that extent marginalized and the Constitution anticipates Parliament to take progressive measures to alleviate that marginalization of the young people."},{"id":5430,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/5430/?format=json","text_counter":426,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Mr. Baiya","speaker_title":"","speaker":{"id":8,"legal_name":"Peter Njoroge Baiya","slug":"peter-baiya"},"content":"I would, therefore, argue that I do not doubt that this piece of legislation will benefit the nation if it is really looked through further, when it is goes to the Committee in the next stage. But I really urge that we do not also dismiss the spirit upon which it is based, because it is a noble one. If you consider some of the procurement that we are dealing with even at the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) level, under the current procurement law, we are actually allowed to give preferential treatment to local contractors. For you to achieve that preferential treatment for the local contractors, it is does require that you do some kind of discrimination in favour of the local people. The basis upon which you are doing that is because you also want to develop capacity locally for this kind of contract. That means that you limit the applicability of the competitive principle in terms of other criteria, so that you can give way and room to one of the local contractors. It ought to apply the same way with regard to the youth. I have not had a problem with the applicability of that rule at the constituency level. Indeed, it has been very helpful. Actually, if the country wants the citizens to own development, the most that it must strive to do is to bring the local people to own those projects. Even as we implement those projects, we have seen the participation of youth. So, the 25 per cent requirement proposed by hon. Wamalwa would even have been met in certain cases. If they are not being met, the threshold will easily be achieved when we have made this kind of law."}]}