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{
    "id": 1378815,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1378815/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 88,
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    "content": "have brought the power to the line. We would not be relying on Ethiopia and Uganda today to import power. It is on account of such briefcase companies that we continue to have reliance of power on other countries. Would you for a second, imagine if today, we had a local or domestic issue within the East African region, and some of our neighbors denied us power? Do you know the kind of economic crisis that we will find ourselves in? This is an issue of national security. The same should be discussed. I do not know how the good and very sharp Members of the Committee on Energy missed out on companies that have also been awarded geothermal exploration licenses. For more than 20 years, some of them have not been able to move a spoon of soil. They continue to hold those licenses in various capitals of the world pretending they are investors. Those are the people who are making us as a country energy insecure. I expect that the Departmental Committee on Energy will crack hard on such institutions. Mr. Speaker Sir, finally, it is on the issue of wayleave. You do know how difficult and expensive it was to evacuate power from Loyangalani to Suswa on account of this particular issue of wayleave alone. You understand this country. We are all Kenyans and we know how we behave most of the times. If today engineers design a particular power line going to places such as Vihiga or Busia where Sen. Okiya Omtatah comes from, even before those programmes leave the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, people will have bought land along that particular line so that they can sell it to the Government exorbitantly. It was on that account that we passed the Land Valuation Bill in this House in 2018. Therefore, I believe those speculators have little business to do. Nonetheless, some people continue to frustrate public interest projects on account of this particular point that has been raised. Therefore, the National Land Commission (NLC), Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, county governments and other relevant stakeholders must come up with guidelines that will cause the acquisition of wayleaves to reduce these challenges. This is because that is an alive issue. We know many people that built even grass-thatched little huts but were charging the Government more that Kshs5 million to get them off the wayleaves. There is nothing called Government, it is me, you and the people that we represent in this House. This is corruption of the highest order. Therefore, I expect that these particular regulations will form part and parcel of the regulations that will be passed alongside the 27 pending regulations by EPRA in accordance with the Energy Bill that we passed in 2019. To date, EPRA has unfortunately not been able to pass those recommendations of the Energy Bill. Curiously though, colleagues in the Departmental Committee, you never gave EPRA a period within which to pass these regulations. This is a law that we passed more than five years ago in this House. We participated and had long debates with them. I served in the Committee on Energy at that time and we had a lot of time with all these stakeholders. I expected that the Committee would give EPRA a timeframe within which to gazette those 27 recommendations. I hope that, even after the passage of this Report and as you exit these recommendations and ask the various State actors to do that which they need to do so that The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}