Reports Leo Odera Omolo
A PARLIAMENTARY aspirant for the Nyakach seat in Kisumu County has decried the rampant cattle rustling in the area saying the practice was repugnant, primitive and retrogressive to peaceful development of the region.
Grace Atieno Akumu who is the only woman among the 13 aspirants vying for the Nyakach seat called upon the government through the Provincial Administration and police authorities to step up the effort of stamping out the menace.
Akumu is the wife of the veteran trade unionist James Danish Akumu made these remarks while addressing a group of students from Nyakach at the Kisumu Polytechnic over the weekend. Her ailing husband J.D.Akmu was once a two terms MP for Nyakach in the early 1970s and in the 1990s
She said cattle rustling in Nyakach district is not only a real menace to peaceful development activities in the area, but is also the source of insecurity in the area thereby retarding progress and development activities. Many people have lost their precious lives in the hands of mercy less rustlers.
Akumu urged the students to place high value on their education so that when they come out at the completion of their studies they could form enterprising contracting companies, which in turn could offer employment opportunities to other school leavers in their home regions.
She decried the misuse of the government devolving funds such as CDF, schools bursary fund and roads maintenance funds arguing that the development projects in which the money is budgeted and channeled for have refused to take ff the ground everywhere in the constituency making the residents to be suspicious that these funds were not being put into proper use.
She appealed to the government to ensure that now that Nyakach has been identified by experts as having sufficient oil deposits for commercial exploration and prospecting, Nyakach people must be given a better deal and shareholding in the international oil companies once the drilling and prospecting began.
She pledged that if elected the next MP for the area, she would press the government hard to build new dams in the upstream of Sondu-Miriu river so that its water could be utilized in irrigation in the lower Nyakach which is semi-arid area for production of more food. The lower Nyakach is constantly prone to perennial floods menace and yet the flood water could be tapped and stored in dams for later use in irrigation of farms to ensure food security in the region.
She said that her other priorities as an MP will be to organize a series of peace meetings between her people and residents of the Neighboring constituencies, such as Sigowet, Belgut, Ainamoi, Mugirango West and Kabondo-Kasipul for the purpose of creating understanding between the diverse communities living in those areas with the view to sensitize them to the danger of allowing criminal elements involve in cattle rustling and other anti-socio-economic activities, which are so detrimental to peaceful co-existence of the communities..
She promised to revive the cotton growing in Nyakach which has been on the cline for years and to fight had for the reduction o poverty indexes in the area by demanding for better return in the prices of agricultural products and food crops for the local farmers, and good access and feeder roads for transport their farm produces to the market places.
She said she will fight for economic empowerment of women and youth in Nyakach as one way of poverty eradication of the support for her bid for the area parliamentary seat.
Members of the Nyakach Students Association at the Kisumu Poytechnics assured Mrs Akumu of their support in her bid for the Nyakach parliamentary seat.
Ends