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{
"id": 1103984,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1103984/?format=api",
"text_counter": 450,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Orengo",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Minority Leader",
"speaker": {
"id": 129,
"legal_name": "Aggrey James Orengo",
"slug": "james-orengo"
},
"content": " Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, thank you very much. First, congratulations for sitting on that Chair. I should be speaking in Kiswahili. You are one of the people who demonstrate that for a language you do not need to be born as part of that community. You can speak the language so effectively. When you speak Kiswahili, I do not want to hear what you say, it is just the way you speak it. I feel so good about it. Let me congratulate Sen. Sakaja and Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr for bringing this Bill. If you look at what is happening in the world now, this Bill is so critical. Disaster now in the world is an everyday event. Look at a power like the USA, how to deal with disaster. Even with the laws they have, they have to keep on revising how they deal with disaster. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, there are many forms of disaster. There are manmade. The worst of it can be terrorism when a building is brought down in Nairobi and that has been done before, like in the West Gate Attack and, of course, what happened in Garissa. How do you deal with that disaster? More so, the disasters that are being experienced in the world are natural disasters. They are saying just as we take lightly the question of climate change. Climate change now in many parts of the world is a source of many problems. Volcanoes that used to be dormant are now erupting. Where we live, in the Great Rift Valley, is in two formations in this country. The Great Lakes of this country are in the Rift Valley. We have craters like Longonot. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, at the end of the day, we have to make sure that the question of disaster is not something that is left to security agencies or the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) or the Red Cross to deal with the questions of disasters. We must be sure of what happens when a disaster happens? Like what I expect from what Sen. Sakaja has done because there is provision for regulations to be made. We should have regulations that set out a protocol. That when there is a disaster, what do first responders do? If, for example, there is a disaster in any part of Nairobi and the police, fire brigade, Red Cross, and army are there. How is that disaster going to be dealt with and who will be in control in terms of dealing with that disaster? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, now that we have devolution, and I heard Sen. Sakaja rightly point out that this is a shared responsibility between the national and county governments. What happens when that disaster takes place? In Homa Bay County, and Sen. M. Kajwang’ talked about it, there is a major disaster that has happened. People have died in the lake and the bodies are still being recovered in the lake. Rescue operations are going on. At the end of the day, there is an appeal to political leaders to contribute, because they do not know how to take these people to hospitals and where they would go. Where is the appropriate place to take them? How do we operate that rescue operation? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, in the lake now, we are very small in terms of having equipment and tools, and even men and women properly trained on how to deal with disaster in the lake. This is not the first one; there have been many. You find local people with small boats trying to rescue their own. The Government agencies come two or three days later or when they come, they come as observers. This in all reality is the kind of legislation and Bill that when it is brought before the Senate, we should think about improving rather than opposing it. It has come at the right time. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as somebody who went - although not as a first responder but a very peripheral person - when the disaster happened at West Gate, you could"
}