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{
    "id": 1373573,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1373573/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 80,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "steel factories in Athi River. They can even be very good accountants for the contractors who are doing these housing projects that we must speak to today. I invite all of us, including my good friend, Hon. Opiyo Wandayi, to comply. I am not sure if he is yet to provide a list of probable sites in Ugunja where housing projects can be actualised. I know Hon. Junet from Suna East is very keen to ensure that there is a housing project in his constituency. It will create hundreds, if not thousands, of job opportunities. Urbanization today would not be possible without an agenda like this in housing. My good friends, Hon. Opiyo Wandayi and Members that were in the National Dialogue Committee, including Hon. Amina from Malindi, will tell you that economists of repute in this country, including international economic institutes, appeared before the National Dialogue Committee and told us that for a country whose economy was in the doldrums at the end of 2022, we must massively and aggressively invest in huge infrastructural development for us to get our economy working again. I cannot remember well but I think it was the gentleman from the State Intelligence Department (SID) who told us that there is no other way of getting out of the economic mess that we are in other than a programme that will aggressively and massively invest in huge infrastructural development. What greater opportunity than this housing agenda to raise money through the Housing Levy and through the Housing Fund? This will help us to massively invest in infrastructural investments that will not only create opportunities for millions of Kenyans to have affordable homes as it is required of us by Article 43 of our Constitution, but homes with reasonable standards of sanitation. Hon. Speaker, reasonable standards of sanitation is what is happening in this project, at least, under the social housing. The studio units have a kitchenette, a reasonable toilet and bathroom. People in slum areas like Kibera, Korogocho and Mathare including officers like the policemen and women will now have decent housing where they do not have to go through the indignity of having to use flying toilets. We will give them dignified settlements where they can live as human beings. I have heard critics of this Bill asking why we are not building houses for our police. I have even seen many Members of Parliament on Television (TV) stations asking why we are not building houses for the policemen and women. We are the same people in this House who changed the policy on how we will provide housing for them. Members today know they are not able to build staff quarters for policemen because they were given a housing allowance. I am glad the Committee, in one of the amendments in Clause 2 of the Bill, have proposed to include institutional housing. This will cater for a very special category of Kenyans; students in our public universities. I saw the Vice-Chancellor of Technical University of Kenya (TUK), the former Kenya Polytechnic University College (KPUC), speak to the Committee on the horrible quarters that students go through. These are our own sons and daughters who come from our villages, constituencies and probably from very decent homes. A student from Siaya, for instance, who has no other relative in Nairobi, is admitted to the TUK and has no other source of accommodation other than some shack on a road reserve in South B with no sanitation at all. That student will not have the dignity to live in a good city like Nairobi and will not perform well in school. Whereas my child and your child Hon. Junet, will move from our houses in Lavington and Karen and commute every day on the back left of our V8 vehicles and dropped at the University and back home… We have an opportunity now to make sure that that child who comes from Suna East has affordable accommodation in Nairobi through the institutional housing. We must give them that opportunity. Hon. Junet says he lives in South B not Lavington. He knows I know him and he knows me. I was not speaking to Hon. Junet but to that Suna East constituent who will come from there and have an opportunity through institutional housing to get decent student 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"
}