Kajiado Governor Joseph Ole Lenku led the Mashujaa celebrations today at Oloitokitok.
Below is his speech;
” My Fellow Great People of Kajiado;
My People of Oloitokitok!
Enta supa pooki!
Muriega !
Habari za mchana !
I salute you all, in the name of God, the Almighty, for making time to attend this auspicious occasion.
It is my utmost pleasure to see each one of you today. I feel greatly privileged to share this great day with you; The First National Day Celebration since you resoundingly gave me a SECOND CHANCE to be the leader of this great County.
You have bestowed on me great honour; seeing that out of the 47 Governors in the 2017-2022 term, ONLY 11 of us got this second opportunity to serve their people. You deserve a pat on your back for a job well done. Clap for yourself!
It was a grueling campaign period; Replete with uncertainties and many probabilities. It was a period where many of us, and many of you, made new friends and new enemies alike.
No one knew how the election outcome would be; each hoping their candidates would prevail. The reality is, only one candidate could become a winner. I congratulate all those candidates who emerged winners in the last elections.
I do not take your new mandate for granted: In it, I heard you tell me and others in the political class in our County that you care not about our differences; but about what we can achieve together. In your new mandate, I heard you loudly tell me and other leaders that you want a real movement for change in Kajiado County.
Indeed, in the mandate you gave me, I heard you reiterate to me and other elected leaders that the season of politics and politicking is over; and the season of real work has began in earnest.
Instructively, on this Mashujaa Day, as we gather with friends and families to celebrate our National and County heroes, we, as leaders are reminded that with the political campaigns behind us, this is not a moment of chest-thumping triumphalism for those who prevailed in the elections; it is a moment of coming together in an abiding faith to make life better for all the people of Kajiado County.
It is a moment of setting our differences aside in an enduring resolve to lead the Transformation of our great County.
And, my fellow great people of Kajiado, today, I solemnly pledge to accept that call from our people to lead the broad movement of change that is reflected and represented in all the leaders you elected. In doing so, I accept the clear call of our people that our differences are nothing compared to what we can achieve together. Yes, maximizing the Strength in our Diversity.
In doing so, I embrace the opportunity to lead in making Kajiado more prosperous; our health care system world class; our schools better; our streets safer; our communities and neighbourhoods stronger; our businesses growing and becoming more profitable; our environment restored; our less-privileged cared for; our youths engaged and inspired; and our transformation real.
My Fellow Great People of Kajiado!
No better occasion than Mashujaa Day would have come in handy to bring us back to our factory settings that it is now time to move on and continue building our Country. It is time to forget the missteps of the past. It is time to recollect ourselves and move forward.
What a great occasion to reflect on our path as a County! Exactly 70 years ago, a number of men and women of great patriotism were determined to unshackle our people from the yoke of colonialism.
It was a scary experience and by the time a State of Emergency was being declared in 1952, it was all systems go to reclaim our independence.
Determined to give us the freedom we enjoy today, they paid the ultimate price; with their liberties, limbs and even lives. Today, as we celebrate our Mashujaa of yore, we are called to reflect on their sacrifices.
While we are in that reflective mode, it is important to remember that in addition to our national Mashujaa who gave us our freedom, we have our County Mashujaa who sacrificed a lot to shape our modern heritage as a County.
Today, we are here to share in the enormous joy which comes with remembering our protracted, long, freedom struggle; the joy of the selfless sacrifices of the great heroes and heroines, who paid their all, for our freedom; the freedom we enjoy! And therefore, my people, it is loud and clear that ours, as a nation, is a heritage of utmost sacrifice.
These forefathers put their life on the line for the dignity of this nation. They made our impressive nationalist history while determining our destiny as a free people!
My People of Kajiado !
As a Government, we have always embraced any opportunity to remember and honour our heroes and heroines.
We have severally remembered the first tier of our nation’s heroes; Those that secured our liberation at the nation level.
This was why early in my first term, I decided to cascade this recognition of our Mashujaa at the County level. In 2018, I formed a task force on our culture and heritage and one of the outputs of that taskforce was to shortlist 20 of our heroes and heroines for County Recognition.
The finalists were drawn from the cultural chieftainship, political and civic founders of our County; educationists; pace- setters in commercial agriculture and animal breeding; early converts to Christianity and eventual great religious leaders, promoters of girl child empowerment, among other areas of extraordinary personal sacrifice and excellence.
Two years later, we further expanded the list of latter day heroes and heroines to 40 and named various roads and public places after them. It is the result of this that where we are today is officially named Oloitipitip Stadium, after former Cabinet Minister, the late Stanley Shapashina Oloitipitip, who hails from this area.
In light of that effort, I now direct the Department of Roads and Public Works to ensure all the roads and public places named after our heroes and heroines have proper signage within the next three months.
My Fellow Great People of Kajiado,
Even as we celebrate our Mashujaas – both the ancestral and the latter day ones – we must use this opportunity to reflect and articulate our defining struggle as a nation, society and County.
Each generation is called upon to define and give meaning to the realities and struggles of its times. Our freedom fighters defined theirs as securing our freedom and independence.
Today, I want to call upon all of us to re-define our transcendental struggle of our time as the existential crisis our County, and in deed the entire country, is staring at, in the form of tripartite related scourges of Climate Change; Environmental degradation and extreme food insecurity.
My fellow Great People of Kajiado County!
Please bear witness to the following sobering truths:
At Independence, our founding father of the Nation, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta declared Poverty, Ignorance and Disease being the nation’s greatest threat to quality life. The reality of today is that Food Insecurity is joining this list
Of “ Our greatest enemies of all times”. The inability to put food on the table is not necessarily because of poverty.
The monster called Climate Change has significantly distorted our mother nature and on its trail, rendered majority of our people incapable of feeding themselves.
As I speak, and as you are aware, we are facing one of the worst droughts in our generation. For vast swathes of our land, the drought has been persistent. Our forest and wooded lands have shrunk precipitously in the last few decades.
We have a forest cover deficit and it is our singular obligation as patriots of Kenya, and Kajiado in particular, to raise it upto the 10% as stipulated in the Constitution.
This ecological destruction has exacerbated the effects of Climate Change which are global in nature with devastating local effects:
The Kajiado County Joint Drought Risk Coordination Committee which I co-chair with the County Commissioner has determined that:
(i)110,000 households are in dire need of food support across the County; and
(ii) 400,000 heads of livestock are in dire need of feed support.
This ruinous drought does not know political divide. Neither does its widespread effects distinguish among ethnic groups or religious creeds.
If this drought afflicts all of us in its impending destruction; and if its looming effects takes toll on us with such imminent unanimity, then, our response to it must unite us in a similar manner – regardless of political ideology; religious creed or ethnic origin.
We must all, in one accord, bonded in our solidarity and fraternity rise to face this terrible tragedy. Soon, it will come to an end; Yes, very soon.
My Good People of Kajiado !
It was not our intention that my first assignment in my Second Term would be to deal with the welfare of hunger- stricken residents. Yes, this is the most urgent task facing the County government at the moment. Human life matters more than anything else. Our livestock are our life line. Both people and livestock must be attended first.
As such therefore, my Government has made several steps to seek short term and long term solutions to the menacing hunger.
Today, I will dwell on the short term efforts.
My People, we now have a central organ jointly formed by the County Government and the National Government. The Kajiado County Joint Drought Risk Coordination Committee is being co-chaired by myself and the County Commissioner.
This committee is the custodian of all the drought mitigation support both in kind and in cash.
We are working closely with several humanitarian organizations to help support needy families. The Committee has reviewed the situation as at now and the support we have so far gotten has catered for only 20 % of all the need. As such, therefore, we still need more support including INDIVIDUAL KENYANS OF GOODWILL.
My Government has set aside Sh 130 Million in its Emergency Fund to help in mitigation of the drought crisis. We are soon going to seek the County Assembly’s Approval for more resources to mitigate the drought situation as agreed between the County and National Governments.
A fortnight ago, my government released relief food for 20,000 households. And the demand is rising by the day.
We shall continue engaging more of our partners for long term food security interventions. I’m glad the Food and Agriculture (FAO) and other partners found it plausible to hold the National Celebrations for the World Food Day in our County last Monday where some of these interventions were discussed.
My Fellow Great people of Kajiado !
The joint effort against this drought has, yet again, demonstrated the need for synergy between the County and the national governments. We have reiterated that officers from both levels of Government MUST WORK together since they are serving the same people.
Our County Drought Risk Committee is cascaded downwards; At the Sub County Level, the Deputy County Commissioner (DCC) and the Sub County Administrator are co-chairs; at the Ward Level, the Ward Administrator and the Assistant County Commissioner are joint chairs while at the locational level, the Village Administrator and the chief must jointly hold meetings, evaluate and audit the lists of beneficiaries at the grassroots.
My Fellow Great People of Kajiado !
Let me now turn to a few other matters touching on the County.
You all know that we have been striving hard to make our healthcare accessible and affordable. Towards this, we have improved our hospitals through equipping them with equipment that enable us offer services that were only available in Nairobi and hospitals outside the county.
We are now experiencing an influx of patients to our hospitals.
We shall continue improving our hospital infrastructure. In the next five years, we are planning to have 25 model health centres; one in each ward. We shall either construct new ones or adopt existing facilities and rehabilitate and upgrade them.
Availability of well-equipped grassroot facilities will ease pressure on the Sub County and Referral hospitals and leave them to deal with more serious illnesses and true referral cases.
We have also realized that despite the many challenges that abound in the health sector, some are suffering from administrative inadequancies.
To address this, we have effected administrative changes at the Department of Health and the County Referral Hospital all in an effort to improve service delivery.
Our eyes will now turn on service delivery at Sub County Hospitals. Hata hapa hospitali ya Oloitokitok tunakuja !
My great people of Kajiado !
As you may be aware, we have achieved a lot in the last five years on land matters. In fact, we are being rated the best County in land reforms down from where we found our land registry being the third worst in Kenya.
Apart from validating plots in our trading centres and issuing genuine owners with high security allotment letters that are acceptable as collateral by commercial banks, we have worked closely with the National Government to ensure over 30,000 title deeds have been processed.
In fact, in Kajiado South, we have been the biggest beneficiary of our land reforms agenda with most members of group ranches breathing a fresh air of land freedom. I beseech the new title deeds holders to utilize their land for economic empowerment.
You must not see the title deeds as a licence for indiscriminate disposal of your land for short term gains.
These lands are your heritage and you must not abuse this freedom by impoverishing yourselves. Let us use these lands diligently to feed ourselves and educate our children to the highest levels possible.
My People of Kajiado !
Kajiado is quickly growing into a hub for agribusiness. It is our mission to have majority of our youth become self- employed as a measure to mitigate against the persistent lack of jobs across the country.
Agriculture need not be that laborious, tiresome activity reserved for the not so schooled. No! With a little mechanization and adoption of technological innovations, agriculture is proving to be the next frontier of wealth for entrepreneurs.
Trade and Agribusiness offer this opportunity. Here in Kajiado South, for example, we shall set up several cottage industries to leverage on the booming horticulture sector.
These cottage industries will also tap on the potential of value addition in milk, beef, bee keeping and ecotourism.
Further to this, we shall enhance our training in technical skills, another high potential area in self-employment. We shall revisit our collaboration with the National Youth Service(NYS) in training our youth on various skills. Together with several development partners, we shall recruit more youth to join our Vocational Training Centres where, so far, we have trained 2,000 beneficiaries in the last few years.
My People of Kajiado !
A Government is as good as the will of its people to pay taxes to enable it provide services. Politics is now over. It is time to build our County. Towards this, It is our intention that we bring the tax payer closer to the Government.
As we strive to develop the County, we call upon all residents to be ready and willing to fulfill their obligations by paying the relevant County levies and other fees.
We are in the process of restructuring our Revenue Department so that we can upscale our collections. The Revenue we collect is below our potential and this is partly because we may not have reached all potential tax payers.
We shall therefore devise a model of revenue that is friendly to the business community and is as de-localized as possible. As they say, Kulipa Ushuru ni Kujitegemea, Let us chart our own development agenda by paying our taxes in good time.
My People of Kajiado!
Back to our spirit of Mashujaa. The value of the existence of human beings can only be measured by the effort they make to make the world a better place to live in. We all have the potential to do those small things that in due course accumulate to become the change we desire.
Everyone here can be a Shujaa; indeed, everyone here is a Shujaa in the making! You do not have do big great things. You only need to do SPECIAL things that touch and transform other people’s lives.
In the spectrum of our lives, there is so much we can do to make tomorrow better or to be your brother’s keeper. Just to mention a few;
(i) Planting Trees and otherwise protecting our fragile
Eco-system;
(ii)Agitation for community rights and justice;
(iii) Fight for people’s individual freedoms
(iv) Girl and boy child empowerment; And
(v)Food security innovations
My Fellow Great People of Kajiado:
As I approach the end of this address, once again, I reiterate my earlier rallying call on the need for us to collectivize our efforts and voices to further Transform our County.
The Transformation of Kajiado that we are witnessing is unassailable. The mandate for change – united in its diversity of political; ethnic; religious; ideological; clan is unmistakable. It is strong; it has the fierce urgency of now, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. Ask not for whom it tolls, for it tolls for all of us.
For the movement for the Change and Transformation of Kajiado County is strong. And righteous. It is inclusive. But it is also contagious in its enthusiasm and urgency.
So we know that we shall soon persuade those in the margins – even those determined to sit on the sidelines — to join us in leading Kajiado County to inclusive prosperity and Transformation.
There is no one who doesn’t have something to offer in this universe. For us, we are available and willing to recognize and honour them.
I wish to stop here and wish everyone;
A Happy Mashujaa Day!”
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