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"id": 218487,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Muite",
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"speaker": {
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"legal_name": "Paul Kibugi Muite",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I would like to add my voice to those who are complimenting the Ministry of Roads and Public Works. If the consumers and people who interact with the Ministry were asked to do a rating, it is the Ministry of Roads and Public Works and the Ministry of Finance that would score a point. I do hope that when those authorities come into legal being, one of the areas where the engineers will focus on when designing the roads is the issue of drainage. It does not make any sense for us to spend millions of shilling tarmacking a road, when we are not attending to proper design of drainage. If you go to Cameroon today, a country which is in the middle of a tropical rain forest, you will not find a single pothole on their roads. That is simply because they design their drainage in such a manner that you do not get stagnant water on the road. You do not need to be a trained engineer to conclude that, unless a road is tarmacked with a good drainage pegged with permanent exit for water--- If you allow water to stagnate on the road, that road is going to have potholes within no time. Examine our potholed roads and you will see that nearly always, it is where water is collecting. So, I do hope the issue of designing drainage when we are designing a road will be given absolute priority. The second point that I would like to make is that, sometimes, the Ministry of Roads and Public Works, including the engineers there, are blamed without seeing the linkage between the Treasury and the Ministry of Roads and Public Works. We have a situation in which engineers design contracts that are signed between the employer and contractor. When we examine the contract, it has a clause which says that once a certificate is issued by the Ministry of Roads and Public Works engineers to confirm that a particular section of the road was done according to the specifications, and if the amount shown in the certificate is not paid within 30 days, it starts accruing interest at commercial bank rates. This is why sometimes we find the so called cowboy contractors. These are contracts in which the original amount was very small, but because they have not been paid for years, the contractors are legally entitled to claim interest at commercial bank rates. That is the standard contract. The Treasury must provide enough funds to the Ministry of Roads and Public Works, so that a contractor who has completed his work and has certificate issued, is paid promptly to stop interests from accumulating. Finally, I would like to draw the attention of the Minister to a potential conflict between this Bill and Cap.265, Ministry of Local Government Authority Act. In terms of the Local Government Authority Act, the Ministry of Local Government has legal power to undertake repair of roads within their areas of authority in the urban centres and towns. So, the Government needs to come up with a policy decision as to whether these roads that are currently served by the Ministry of Local Government are also intended to be taken over by these Authorities we are creating for administration or the Ministry of Local Government will continue to maintain them. If it is the intended to transfer those roads to the new Authorities, then there is a need to amend Cap.265, so as to revoke the authority of the Ministry of Local Government. If that is not done, there will be a conflict. If, on the other hand, it is intended, as a policy decision by the Government, that the Ministry of Local Government will continue to administer the roads, then that needs to be harmonised, so that there is no conflict between the two statutes. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to support."
}