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"id": 183963,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Mungatana",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Medical Services",
"speaker": {
"id": 185,
"legal_name": "Danson Buya Mungatana",
"slug": "danson-mungatana"
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"content": " Thank you, Madam October 15, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2739 Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to make a brief contribution to this Motion. May I also thank hon. Namwamba for moving this Motion that deals with the real issues that affect our people. I also want to thank Dr. Khalwale for the support in seconding this Motion. I honestly support the spirit of this Motion because I know what it means. However, I am not sure that everything, especially the legal aspect of it, is possible in terms of riparian reserves, what it means when we go into compensating all victims who occupy riparian reserves and what the law says about that. So, there may be an issue about the whole legal aspect, and I do not need to explain that to hon. Namwamba. However, I support the spirit of this Motion. So, there may be an issue about the whole legal aspect and I do not need to explain this to the hon. Namwamba. But the spirit of this Motion is what I support. There is need for the Government, particularly the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, to take charge of flooding zones in this country. We have been told what happens when there is flooding in Budalangi. We also know that it is the poorest of the poor that are affected when we have flooding in the countryside. It is the poor people who cannot afford to stay on higher grounds. It is also the poor Kenyans who have to live in an area that they know when the river floods, they are going to be affected. This is because they do not have an option. When the floods come, the little that they have, including the chicken, goats and crops, are destroyed. They cannot even invest in proper housing because when the waters come raging, those homes will be no more. To my recollection, there has been some effort on the side of the Government, but I do not know what has happened. We were told of a huge project that was to be launched during the last Parliament. We were certain that the problem of flooding in Budalangi would be a thing of the past. However, it has continued to date. While acknowledging that some effort has been done there, I think that enough has not been done to control the flooding in Budalangi. In fact, I would take one step ahead and say that this Ministry of Water and Irrigation has not even come up with a policy paper before this House to discuss and plan what we shall do when we have flooding not only in Budalangi, but also in other places where flooding is a perennial problem. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I speak on behalf of the Tana Delta districts. If you look at the kind of problems that we experience there, they are not very dissimilar to the problems that the people of Budalangi experience. Yet, to date, there has not been a single effort by the Government to try and control the flooding in the Tana Delta. When you look at the ordinary mwanachi who is there, and the devastating effects these waters have and then you see there is even no policy--- In fact, the people who come to assist, like it has now become almost like a normal thing to do--- The Red Cross and Ministry that is in charge of disaster management appear. At that time, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation disappears. There are no policy guidelines or directions. They are not telling us, \"next year when floods come, we are putting this and that in place.\" Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I have argued before this House before and I do repeat that argument, that there is a seriously skewed policy in terms of distribution and management of resources that are available in this country. I am sure that if the problem was affecting some other areas, money would have been found and allocated overnight. Also, engineers would have been sent there, day and night. Yet, if it is coming from Budalangi or the Tana Delta, it is like we are not part of this Republic. Likewise, if we have flush floods in Garissa and there is a terrible waste of the little resources that people have been saving, again, we do not see a similar response as when it would have happened in some other parts of this country. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats who sit in this Ministry are people who are bred in a system. They continue to replicate the same policies. They do not seem to think that the rest of the country matters. It is just certain areas. This has to change. When we write a new Constitution, one of the things that we must give to any new Government Minister or the Head of State who come into office, is the ability to sack bureaucrats from some senior level. This will ensure that the people who take up responsibilities in 2740 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 15, 2008 Government are able to truly effect the changes that we require. For example, hon. Kiunjuri who is in charge of this Ministry now and he is going to reply to this Motion, has just been appointed to that Ministry. The rest of the bureaucrats are the same people who will not give him the policy that will address the problems in Tana Delta. They will advise him differently. They would tell him: The money should go to Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Eldoret towns. These are places where the revenue comes from. So, let us give the rest of Kenya one or two projects or forget about them all together. I would support this Motion and urge this Ministry that, let us have a change. Let them go back to their Ministry and come up with a floods control policy. They should allocate resources to this kind of work, because up to now, when we have these problems, we do not know what to do. In the Tana Delta, we have sued the KenGen because they are the ones who are holding water upstream. We have requested that the Board of Directors in that company be balanced. If we have a generating company, it should have directors from the lower stream areas. We should allow input from people who are affected to serve as directors in such companies. We should have a change of attitude. If we are going to solve this problem in this country, there is need for us to come up with a proper floods policy. According to me, it is non-existent as of now. In fact, right now, what there is, is an haphazard response to issues. For example, if you have a problem of drought, they just go and sink water wells. We have never seen a policy from this Ministry to even check the spread of wells. We even find places where wells are being sunk and, yet they have never even checked the water levels or done mapping. They just go and sink the boreholes haphazardly. There is no water policy. I think that this motion should be supported by this House because the spirit of it is a wake-up call to the Ministry to look at what we are saying on behalf of the people of Kenya. The Ministry should not be bound too much in the legalities. We would want to see them respond to this Motion by looking at what can be done. This is because when the hon. Members are saying these things, they are not saying so, because it is nice to do so. They are saying these things because we need to bring to the attention of the Government that something needs to be done. My prayer is that the Minister will take these concerns, do a flood policy and concentrate, not only in Budalangi, but the Tana Delta as well. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, with those few remarks, I beg to support."
}