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"id": 189444,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Chanzu",
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"legal_name": "Yusuf Kifuma Chanzu",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, for the opportunity to support this Vote for the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development. Just like the previous speakers have said, I think this Ministry has been long overdue. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think what has happened is that, the problems we see in towns like Nairobi of congestion, traffic jams and even crime arise because of lack of proper planning in the beginning. Now, we are talking about very major schemes for the city and the environs, which will now be converted into a metropolis. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I just wanted the Minister to take note of that. He should not just think of the promises or assurances he is giving us that he is going to give us a marvellous thing. It is like a dream for now. Like he said himself, it is a dream. There are short term problems which are abound and we cannot move away from them and say that we are going to plan. You cannot plan for next year, if you cannot be able to live this year. So, I would like the Minister to look--- I know he must be having it somewhere, but we must pay a lot of attention to the short term problems we are having at the moment, and then go to the medium term problems. Even if it takes a very short time to go through all of them, but I think we must go through all those stages. If you look at this city or the Ministry of Local Government, which has now been split to create the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development--- If you look at what has happened about the markets, which the Government has tried to plan for many years--- We talked about those markets. We talked about Muthurwa Market and markets in Dagoretti and all over the place. It took a long time to talk about them. But if you look at the kind of market that we came up with at Muthurwa, it is pathetic! One wonders whether that market was even handed over properly! I understand that there are a lot of complaints. Even if you look at the traffic planning and the way it was done--- Somebody just rushed it to justify a position as a Minister! Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, those are the kinds of things that we want to address, so that we can get a way of achieving the long term goals, which I really appreciate. I would like us to have a situation where, when we are in this country, we should feel like it feels when in other countries. When you go to a place like the USA, it does not matter whether you are in California or Florida, wherever you go, there is, at least, a place where you feel comfortable. I do not want a situation where we concentrate on one place here. All of us are going to pay attention to this place and we forget that we need to have other areas developed. The Minister should go further than the dream he has been having so that, by the end of the day, we will have some kind of transfer of whatever we are doing here, be it technology or the like. If it is technology, it should be taken to places like Mombasa. We want everybody to feel comfortable in Kenya so that we do not have what the colonialists did in this country. They developed some areas at the expense of others. That is what we are trying to do. Even the clashes that we had after the elections were caused by those imbalances and inequalities. When somebody is in Kakamega, he should feel comfortable that he is in Kenya. When he comes to visit his brother in Nairobi, he should feel comfortable in Nairobi. When somebody is in Mandera, he should be comfortable there. So, we want the Minister to go further with this mission so that the country can develop. Later on, it will be better. There is another issue which the Minister raised about the population of this city. I think this is very important. In 1999, the population of Nairobi was about 3.3 million and today, we are talking about 4.7 million people. This confirms that there was no planning and nobody cared to take responsibility. By the way, I had a chance to work in the July 16, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1913 Ministry of Local Government. As a civil servant, I noticed that politicians, whether Ministers or councillors, are more interested with politics than the development of the place. The Ministers are more interested in how they can nominate councillors. This issue is even going on now. They have not even cared to know where those nominated councillors will be housed. So, I am very happy about this dream the Minister has. We want to support the Ministry because we also want to be proud of our cities and the country. Another thing which is critical, which I also noticed, is the appointment of officers to senior positions. This must be based on merit. This business of saying so-and-so is so-and-so should come to an end. We had the Kenya Urban Transport Improvement Project (KUTIP). This project was supposed to solve the problem of traffic jams in the city. I am happy that Mr. Sika is now the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development. He saw what happened. A road that was supposed to take a year or two took many years. For instance, Langata Road took many years. It took many years to implement the project and we were overtaken by events. It is a problem to drive from Ongata Rongai to Nairobi because the traffic jam starts from there. By the time you come to Bomas of Kenya, it is impossible to drive to town. So, I think it is something that we really need to think about. Let us not just confine ourselves to Nairobi. In fact, my colleagues who spoke about this Motion said a lot. I think many people did not expect this will be what it is. We are giving the Minister green light to look much deeper and broadly. We should be talking about a dual carriage way beyond Ongata Rongai. There are people who live in Kiserian. If you go to Ngong, it is also full. Maybe, his officers will tell him what happened because a lot of money was spent on this road and we did not get value for money. They are now putting street lights, but the project was done in the 1990s. Even now, if you are on Ngong Road, the moment you get to Kenyatta National Hospital, it takes you more time to get to town than when you are coming from Karen Shopping Centre. Those are the kind of things we want addressed. We have very many educated people in this country, but nobody ever thought of us having underground rail lines. We never thought about that. We even never thought of designing buildings and parking spaces. So, this is a very noble idea, and we know that the Minister is capable of doing it. In this matter, self-interest has to be put aside. The self-centredness of the leaders we have has caused us problems. Many of my colleagues have talked about greed and land grabbing. In fact, we should be bold enough and deal with the land grabbing issue. Mr. Orengo said that people were allocated land and only paid a few shillings, but they are selling it for a lot of money. Why can you not guys repossess all that land? Does it help when somebody gets land for Kshs5 million and is selling it to the Government for Kshs500 million?"
}