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{
    "id": 1102921,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1102921/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 181,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, this Bill seeks to create a legal framework that will address such disasters from the early warning signals to the disaster mitigation and to making sure that we train people. How would these young people know what to do in case of fire in their school? What will my people in Kibagare do? A few weeks ago, I had also another fire there. Fortunately, a young man, a very good coordinator of mine called Sean called me. I was able to get through to the county government. In less than 15 minutes, the fire engines were there and they had water. Many times you will call them and they come without water as if they are coming to watch the fire as well. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the way disaster risk has been managed in this country has been a disaster. If a county like Nairobi City with more resources than most counties have these challenges, what about other counties like Bomet or Makueni? What we have done and we are proposing first is coordination from the national level and the county level. That coordination must be done. There is need to have a single authority at the national level that deals with disaster. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, a few years ago, that must have been 2015 or 2016, I remember spending three nights at Huruma where a building collapsed. Where the building had collapsed is just a few metres from the National Youth Service (NYS) headquarters, but no one was able to come at that time because of the protocol. I thank again my friends who came through. All I had done was to buy milk and bread and load it in my car and went there to say what we need to do. It is the young people from Ngei Ward in Mathare who came to rescue the victims. I was able to organise them and we rescued some people. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, it was so sad. You can imagine the tool that was used to cut the steel bars in a collapsed building, I had to purchase from a hardware store yet the officers were just looking. I really pity the officers because there is nothing they can do themselves. The most painful part of it was to see officers carrying 21 bodies on the third day of children who could have been rescued on the first day if there was proper disaster risk management. There have been incidences and I know I have shared this with my co-sponsor Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. where the site of the disaster, you have three Government agencies staring at each other in the eyes. You have the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), National Disaster Operations Centre (NDOC) and National Disaster Management Unit (NDMU). They are looking at each other. There is no single command. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, if anybody has dealt with disaster risk, you know that the first few minutes are the most critical. That is when you save lives and property. We are not creating a new entity. This entity is bringing them together. People have complained we have too many agencies and it is true."
}