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{
    "id": 1093925,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1093925/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 54,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wamatangi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 646,
        "legal_name": "Paul Kimani Wamatangi",
        "slug": "paul-kimani-wamatangi"
    },
    "content": "Parliament is convened to have this Bill restarted. It is important that we put it on record that what happened in the last session and pursuant to the court ruling that this will be a thing of the past. Having said that, this Bill that has been pursued by Sen. (Dr.) Zani whose determination is that something should be done to ensure that there is justice for the people of this country in the areas where natural resources are situated. Indeed, where it has been decided by the investors, the Government and interested parties that they need to exploit these natural resources for the benefit of those companies, nation-building and also extend those benefits to ensure that as those companies, investors and the national Government, big companies who build roads benefit, the local population also benefit. During the life of that first committee we undertook a lot of visits in this country to look at how it affects local communities differently, where natural resources are situated differently. I remember we paid a visit to the County of Machakos and also Makueni County. Some of the stories that we found there are simply unbelievable. We paid a visit to the County of Machakos and we found a place where exploiters collect sand for sale in Nairobi. We said this in the last House that you will find that the most beautiful buildings in this city like the KICC, the most magnificent hotels, big stadiums like Kasarani Stadium, beautiful homes in the most exquisite estates in this city, the sand that builds those places is harvested in Machakos and Makueni. We paid a visit to those places - I hope and pray that by now that situation could have changed - and we found that the renowned spots where this sand is collected the harvesters and sellers of this sand live in pits inside those places. We were flabbergasted to find that there is a family that lives in some of those pits there and they have put up small ramshackles at least somewhere high above the sand beds such that when it rains they are not washed away by the water. However, their livelihood is pitiful. If that sand is harvested there, how much does the county government benefit from that exercise? You will find that it is almost nil, negligible. If a truckload of sand is collected from Machakos, at that time they said they were paying about Kshs500; maybe that has increased by now. That same truckload of sand will come and fetch maybe 50 times more here in the city. You then ask yourself: How much trickles down to the person whose farm that has been harvested? You find it is almost nil. The same situation is found in every area. When we went to Kajiado, we tried to engage a Chinese firm that was building the southern bypass then. We found that there was already a very big rift between them and the county government of Kajiado. The reason? The Chinese firm had been awarded a contract worth Kshs17 billion to build the southern bypass and they were collecting all the stones they were crushing to take the ballast to build that bypass. They had adopted a position that they could not pay even one shilling to the county government of Kajiado for the stones they were collecting to crush and build the southern bypass. I happen to have the benefit of being the chairperson of the Committee on Roads and Transport and I know that when a contractor is doing a bill of quantities to charge for the construction of a road he will charge per cubic metre, including that stone that he has collected for free to crush and get paid to the tune of millions of shillings."
}