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{
    "id": 1372170,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1372170/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 215,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Maanzo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13589,
        "legal_name": "Maanzo Daniel Kitonga",
        "slug": "maanzo-daniel-kitonga"
    },
    "content": "In fact, the Constitution has already directed that water services are devolved and the national Government can only give basic principles of the policy on which of these will be implemented. So, when you look at many other failed water projects like the Nol-Turesh water going to Emali, there has been a dispute between Kajiado and Makueni Counties, simply because there are neither proper legal frameworks nor regulations. This results when you make a law like this without stakeholder consultation or public participation. Public participation has become what is in the mind of certain individuals. Public participation should be standard. In fact, I remember in the last House - in the National Assembly - we had a Public Participation Bill which never saw the light of day, as the House expired. It has never been re-introduced. The Bill was dealing with a very important area of legislation. Making laws on public participation is very critical. In this Water Act, we have cosmetic public participation, just for the records, so that it can come to the House, receive a rubberstamp and then proceed to the Executive for another signature. We have to take these regulations seriously. On this particular one, a proper job has not been done. I agree with Sen. Oketch Gicheru that this Act should be thoroughly amended, failure of which, they should be sent back to be redone. It does not seek to achieve the purpose of making sure water is supplied to every household in this country. The original plan was to have water taps in every house in the rural areas and in Nairobi City County. Does that happen in Nairobi City County? No. Despite the big dam, there are so many cartels, some who break the water pipes then supply water illegally. That has not been sufficiently catered. Why is there insufficient water supply in Nairobi City County when there is a big dam? Why do we have more water trucks selling water instead of having the County Government of Nairobi supply water and get paid reasonably in every household? It is the failure of the law. These amendments have not addressed that problem and have not devolved this function to Nairobi City County and any other county. Therefore, we have a problem that there are more water vendors and water trucks selling water whose quality is not even certified to Kenyans. Supply of water is what reduces diseases by more than half. Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale will agree with me that if we had clean water supply, half the people who visit the hospitals would not do so. Half of the children dying out of dirty situations or water would not die. We would cut our budgets far since prevention is better than cure. Instead of going to cure people, we would have prevented it by supply of water. This is a very important law and cannot be taken as a joke in this House, the way it has been handled in the National Assembly. It has to be thoroughly amended, take care of the people and go through public participation. Otherwise, we will end up with another law, where Sen. Okiya Omtatah or any other water stakeholder, goes to court as they are now. They are already in court fighting many things. They have been to our committees and have made Petitions here, but have not been listened to. These Petitions would no longer exist if there was proper public"
}