Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi said it is for the National Assembly to allocate the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the money to bail out Kenyans abroad when they find themselves in problems with the laws of the host countries.
Mudavadi said that the government should not be pressured to provide money to bail out people who have been involved in unlawful activities abroad when they had not allocated it in the budget.
“We as the government are being pressured by the society when it was the parliament that had the answer. Kenyan society needs to become cognizant of this and we communicate to our Kenyans so that we don’t face further embarrassment as a government when in reality it was the Parliament that had a say on the resources,” said Mudavadi.
Speaking during question time at the National Assembly, Mudavadi said that the hard truth needed to go out was that it was Parliament that should allocate resources for Kenya to continuously bail out Kenyans who have landed on the wrong side of the law in various countries.
“It was a constitutional obligation to safeguard Kenyans everywhere and it was therefore important for the parliament to do resource allocation to help the government intervene for the Kenyans in the diaspora,” said Mudavadi.
He stated that we have over 1000 Kenyans incarcerated in different countries for various reasons, some misdemeanors, and some serious that had been committed.
“To the innocence or guilt of the individuals who are in this particular question, I just want to we all must be vigilant on this. We will nevertheless take up the matters again with our missions and see what more can be done to assist in enabling Kenyans to have access to legal support so that they can be able to deal with his challenges,” said Mudavadi.
He said it was not the wish of the Kenyan government to see its nationals languishing in various places across the world and acknowledged that it was important in a collective campaign as leaders to be able to convey especially to the young people.
“We have a demographic where the young people are the ones who are facing this interruption and they constitute 70 percent and they are not informed about the consequences. It is our collective responsibility to start conveying messages of awareness to our young people in all our constituencies in the country, that they should be cautious, because getting into trouble there can be very painful. You can be isolated,” said Mudavadi
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