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{
    "id": 1073423,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1073423/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 266,
    "type": "other",
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    "content": "looking at ways of enhancing efficiency on how we deliver through PPPs. This House must stand firm to ensure that PPP projects are done in the most transparent and accountable manner. The Bill talks to issues to do with direct procurement. Every time I see questions to do with direct procurement, I shudder because it is usually the genesis of corruption in this country. When the time comes, we will be looking at issues that touch directly on procurement to make sure that we seal the loopholes so that this law is not used as an avenue for corruption. I heard the Chief Whip mention the issue of the Expressway from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to ABC in Westlands. How transparent was the process? How open was the process of identifying the contractor of that project? On the issues we hear Members raising, how did we ensure that there is actual and tangible local content in that project? The people sweeping the roads and the streets are Chinese casual workers. Where is the local content in this project? Who are the beneficiaries? Is it really the Chinese contractor that you see on the road or are there local faces hiding behind the Expressway project? We hear that we are now moving towards PPP projects of Kenya Wildlife Service Game Reserves. This is our land. This is the land that our forefathers and fathers fought with our colonial masters for. Are we going to see other new black colonial masters today? The people who have already taken enough of our land are now using PPP projects and the laws that have been enacted by this House to further take away more of our land to benefit private individuals and entities? We must be careful. During the Committee of the whole House, I will bring amendments to ensure that we protect not just our KWS land, but we also protect all public land in this country. After the colonialists left, there are those who took half or more of this country’s agricultural land. Today, there are new avenues of using land as a factor of production to generate income: Mining, conservatory and wildlife reserves that we are seeing in KWS. There is a huge oil reservoir in Turkana, wind power in Marsabit where it was discovered in yester years, and solar energy in Garissa. In yester years, land in those areas was considered to be valueless and meaningless but, with the increase in technological advancements around the world, land that previously was not very valuable today is very valuable. You will see people coming to take huge chunks of land in Marsabit because of wind power or huge chunks of land in northern Kenya because of solar power or the water reservoirs in Turkana and elsewhere. That is why I am saying we must jealously guard our public assets so that we do not in a way auction part of our country and more so, our most important and primary factors of production like land. This is so that tomorrow we will not have expressways running from Westlands to JKIA or Mlolongo at the expense of the Kenyan taxpayer at a time when - and you have travelled Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker and so have many members on this House on what you call benchmarking trips. I hope those in the Committee on Transport, Public Works and Housing had benchmarked on how expressways are done around the world. I have never seen an expressway anywhere in the world where you come and find a road corridor that had three lanes and at times four lanes on either sides of the road and you come and shrink that passage below here so that you get people to use the expressway above at a cost. Those are some of the issues we must make sure that this House is able to interrogate. I want to bring amendments to ensure that, for every public private partnership deal that goes through, this House must have a say. We must not allow those in the Executive to use their positions of power and privilege to amass more wealth through the disguise of public private 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."
}