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"id": 184204,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/184204/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kenneth",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister, Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030",
"speaker": {
"id": 167,
"legal_name": "Peter Kenneth",
"slug": "peter-kenneth"
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"content": " Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I stand to support Vote 12 - Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Local Government. Let me congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government. He has been in the Government for a long time, and he has a good team and should be able to make the Ministry of Local Government an example, and set the way forward to make sure that the local authorities achieve what they should achieve. Looking at the Development Vote, we have seen a lot of development of markets and bus parks. I want to encourage the Ministry that at many places where markets are being built and bus parks being put up, local authorities have interests competing with what the Ministry is doing. So, you will find that there is a lot of hawking, kiosks and so on. It does not make sense for a whole Ministry to spent so much to put up a very good market, then we have kiosks and hawking outside the market. The money that is spent, for example Kshs1.8 billion, should be able to alleviate poverty by allocating stalls to those who are trading in kiosks and those who are hawking, so that our trading centres or cities can look more beautiful and better than they are today. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Ministry of Local Government must come up with standards for municipal councils, cities and county councils. I am talking about this because year in, year out, they are given LATF money; so, how do you evaluate the use of that money if standards do not exist. When I talk about standards, I am talking about certain basic standards. What are the planning standards of a county council? What are the environmental standards of a municipal council? What are the infrastructure standards of a certain county council, municipal council or a city. I am saying that the Ministry should be in a position to tie LATF funds to certain minimum standards that all county councils and municipal councils must adhere to before the release of LATF funds to them. Unless we have a way of assessing our councils, then we will not be able to assess how best the LATF funds are used. By setting standards, we will be encouraging our own councils to work harder and make Kenya a better place to live in. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to support my colleagues who have spoken before me about direct elections of mayors and chairmen. It is important that we have a person elected in the authority which he or she seeks to control. A unique example is - we do not have to reinvent the wheel - the City of London, which elects its mayor. He is the Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan Police of London. So, he even decides on the police issues. I will allude to this when I will be speaking about Nairobi. It is important that, that person is accountable to the people he 2774 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 15, 2008 represents. A Motion was passed here in the last Session, to the effect that mayors be elected directly by the people, so that you do not have councillors being taken to some remote places, hidden there and then they come to elect the chairman or the mayor, who will be more beholden to them than to the people whom he represents. I do support that they should be elected directly. I hope that the Minister will enforce a Motion that was passed in the last Session for election of mayors directly. A lot has been said about the allowances of councillors. In fact, early this week, there was a discussion about councillors. I want to encourage the Minister to have a starting point as the Odongo Omamo Report. I think it deals in a big way with the issue of councillors. Although Mr. ole Metito spoke about having the uniform rates, I think we do not need to re-invent the wheel. A lot of work was done in the Omamo Report, and it can be a very good starting point in harmonising and increasing the allowances of councillors. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to challenge the Ministry on two issues, which I think are important. We have to be innovative. One issue that I want to challenge the Ministry on is solid waste. People have turned solid waste into something beneficial to the economies of their own countries. Solid waste can be recycled. The cartons and plastics that are recycled are sold to China. Cans are also being recycled and sold. More importantly, we need to have proper land fills where we can put our garbage. That is how the developed world has gone. They have hills made out of garbage, so that they can produce energy from those hills. Quite a number of land fills in the world are producing about 60 megawatts purely from garbage. We are fighting over Sondu Miriu, which produces 60 megawatts, whereas the garbage in Dandora can produce that. It just requires the Ministry to be innovative, and come up with a privatisation scheme on how garbage is to be collected. We clean the city by sending the garbage there. We should have proper environmental areas for that garbage, and then power is produced from garbage centres. In fact, many of those land fills have become very good golf courses in the world after they have been filled to capacity. When you look at the Nyika Plateau just after Athi River, it can become a very good land fill for garbage and we get power from it. We do not have to re-invent the wheel, because it is happening everywhere in the world. We just need to copy and follow that. The second thing that I would like to encourage the Ministry to be innovative with is water. Today, Kenyans are talking about shortage of water, but we do not have water waste management. The municipal councils and cities are in charge of that. That water can be recycled and used for other purposes, yet we are saying that we have a shortage of water and the dam levels are going down. All that we are doing is intake, but where that water goes, there is not water waste management. I want to encourage the Ministry to move fast and ensure that we have a proper water waste management policy that encourages the harnessing of resources. Finally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to talk a little about what I see in our three Cities today. I have seen that we are doing a lot of street lighting in Nairobi."
}