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{
"id": 1337404,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1337404/?format=api",
"text_counter": 331,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mukurweini, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Kaguchia John",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I second the Land (Amendment) Bill, which amends the Land Act by Hon. Simon King’ara. It is a timely and necessary amendment as it seeks to address issues that will bring good order and planning in our cities and country. They will help us have well-coordinated development in our Republic. The issues that Hon. King’ara has raised are fundamental in ensuring that we have development in our country. Development must be well-intentioned, deliberate, coordinated and well organised so that it does not encroach into public space and bring disorder. As you have seen so far, we have development in our country which has, by and large, brought disorder in other areas. For example, if you are going to develop a nice and well-organised estate, you leave some piece of land for public utilities like sporting activities, a public school, a hospital and a church. The moment you complete the demarcation and sub-division of that estate land, you go ahead to sell out the land that was demarcated for church, sporting activities and public utilities. That kind of development jeopardizes the same good order we seek to achieve through those gated communities and our establishments in different estates in this Republic. This is one of the City's most common and recurring challenges and problems. That is how we have ended up having slums. That is also how we have ended up having estates where you cannot have sporting activities going on because that land has already been re-subdivided and sold to other people. If you compare what we do in our country with other jurisdictions, you will be surprised that we are sometimes not very careful. In fact, we are careless. If you go to other jurisdictions, you will find that even when you have to do some little concreting of your own space in your own home and house, you must apply for a permit. You must prove to the council or county government that the storm water you will have in that concreted area will be directed to a certain kind of drainage. You must show that the type of waste generated from that establishment is, in one way or another, catered for and handled in the plans you seek approval for. But in our country, we have neglected all this. Then we stand surprised when we find ourselves in a highly disorganised system and uncoordinated developments in the cities and rural areas. We stand surprised at how we got here. Correcting those kinds of ills is definitely an extremely difficult situation. That is why I support this amendment. Hon. Temporary Speaker, the problem of public land being encroached on and sold to private individuals is common in the cities. If you go to the rural areas, for example, Mukurweini, where I come from, one of the biggest challenges we have today when we want to develop and expand our roads is that we do not have any more reserve for the roads we want to expand. It is a huge problem. Every moment you want to expand a small farm road, it has already been eaten up by the adjacent pieces of land. It has been taken up by other people who are already using it to cultivate napier grass and have done fences almost at the middle of the road. For that reason, it becomes tough for you to achieve the 12-metre road, 9-metre road and even the 20-metre road. It becomes an extremely difficult case. For that reason, I support that whenever you have done sub-division of whatever piece of land you have, you must have the road reserve registered by the county government or any other government organisation or body that has authority over that road. If it is Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA), or Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), then that land must be properly demarcated and registered by that particular institution. As much as we are also going to be doing the same for the land that land-buying companies will leave out, housing developing companies, and all those kinds of arrangements, let us have that piece of land registered by the Government so that the moment you have sub-divided your estate, then that public land that you have seized and set aside ceases being the property of that institution; it ceases being a property of that land-buying company; 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."
}