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"id": 218497,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/218497/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Nyachae",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Roads and Public Works",
"speaker": {
"id": 342,
"legal_name": "Simeon Nyachae",
"slug": "simeon-nyachae"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. First, I must apologise that I may not be able to cover all the useful points that I have heard from yesterday to this evening. However, I will cover, broadly, a few areas which I consider to be pertinent. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, may I say that some of the suggestions that have come forward this afternoon, particularly with regard to the clause on the experience of the Director- General and so on, some of them are likely to come up at the Committee Stage when the relevant Departmental Committee of Parliament which has gone through this Bill, will be coming up with 1814 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 13, 2007 certain additional recommendations. So, I would not like to comment on such kind of matters. The other thing which was mentioned by hon. Lagat was about auditing and accounting. I think that, here, the stakeholders--- This is not just a Government Bill, it is a document that has been drafted after consultations across the board of all stakeholders, that is, the users of the roads, the business community, the professionals and so on. They are the ones who have given this opinion. With regard to accounting, it is the international standards of accounting and auditing that this country follows in every company, in the banking sector and in all organisations. I cannot understand why, we, ourselves, through these institutions that we are setting up, would be following a different system of accounting and auditing which is not applicable in this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said that, on the issue of classification of roads, this is a matter that is absolutely necessary. I wish to report to this House that we had already started an exercise of preparing the terms of reference on the classification of roads. It is not as simple as we see it. This is because it requires a lot of statistical information on the utilisation of the roads that need to be classified. This is being done. We are now in the process of appointing some specialists in this field. Some may get some input from, say, our international friends such as the World Bank who could help us in the preparation of the terms of reference. So, with regard to this matter, we are in agreement that it is absolutely necessary that we do it. With regard to the problem of damages on our roads and the axle weight, this is a very complex headache. It is a very big problem because it involves changing the laws in terms of controlling the type of vehicles we need in this country. The roads specifications that we have in this country cannot allow our roads to carry some of the vehicles that ply on them. These vehicles, some of them are meant for concrete roads, but in this country, we do not have concrete roads. So, when the heavy vehicles come, they just ply over the roads and the following week, you will see the roads sinking. Now, we have another headache, that is, corruption of the axle weight. I am talking about corruption at the weigh bridges. We have even decided that we are going to abandon the current static weigh bridges and have computerised, centrally controlled, mobile weigh bridges so that when a vehicle is passing through somewhere, someone in a central place here in Nairobi is able to see what has been weighed, say, in Mombasa. That way, if they give us the wrong records, already, the computer will have shown at the central point what the weight is. This is a big problem. I have tried! For instance, to show you how serious the matter is, we have our own officers there. We also have the police and all types of people there. You transfer one policeman from the weighbridge to general duties, the next thing he will do is to resign!"
}