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"id": 239906,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. C. Kilonzo",
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"id": 46,
"legal_name": "Charles Mutavi Kilonzo",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to thank the Minister for having removed that tent from Uhuru Park. Uhuru Park does not belong to a particular denomination. The good job of beautification should be extended to other cities. However, I would like to talk about the City Mortuary. The Minister needs to do something about the City Mortuary. What is happening there is very bad. When people are alive, we like them. Or is it when they can vote for us, we like them? When they are dead and, therefore, cannot vote for us, we are not bothered about them. I am told that we have only three pathologists. One of them is always at the court. The other one does postmortems and the other one is probably on leave. So, in essence, we have only one pathologist at the City Mortuary. The workload there is too much! We need to employ as many as ten pathologists. The capacity of the City Mortuary was for the early 1960s and 1970s. We need to expand it. I understand that the NCC collects Kshs2.4 million every week from the City Mortuary and yet they cannot even buy gloves, overalls or uniforms. I know that the Minister is very able. I would, therefore, urge him to go there and address that issue. We do not want to hear about unclaimed bodies. If a body is not collected within two weeks, it should be disposed off. There are laws for that! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish to talk about fire fighting. That is one department that has been ignored for very many years by the NCC. We saw the City Hall burning and we were shocked because they could not do anything yet these are the people we are relying on. I would like to ask the Minister to ensure that there is enough fire fighting equipment at the City Hall because that is the sign of a city. If there is a small smoke, there are automatic sprinklers because that is the City Hall. City Hall is the pride of a city. I do not want to over-emphasise on that. I would like to touch on the issue of Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF) money. The LATF is like a country called Alaska. Everybody knows about it and nobody wants to go there. Why? Because councillors have taken LATF money to be their pocket money. When Mr. Kamanda was an Assistant Minister in that Ministry, he had a good occasion of visiting my town council. However, he was lucky enough because I cautioned him. I told him: \"If you are going there, the first thing is that I am not going to accompany you. The second thing is, go with enough security.\" I met him the following day and he told me that he could not believe what he saw. Those are the August 2, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2573 people who are running our local authorities. All of them are in court because of defrauding the council. I would like to ask the Minister to bring whatever reforms he feels necessary to trim the number of councillors and councils. We should also amend the LATF Act to make sure that it operates like the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). The donors have praised the CDF and yet they never talk about the LATF money they have given us. We will support the Minister to ensure that whatever reforms he wants are implemented. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other day I received a call from my constituency and I was told there was a big problem with Thika River. They did not want to reveal to me what the problem was. So, I drove all the way and what I saw there was unbelievable. There was raw sewage which comes from Thika Municipality. It had been dumped into Thika River. It flows all the way over 100 kilometres downstream. That is the water that people are meant to drink downstream. If you go to the other side of Athi River, it is the same problem. If you go to Munyu area, you cannot drink water from the river. We need to ensure that major urban centres have enough treatment plants so that the water downstream is not affected by raw sewage. Let me turn to the issue of hawking. Hawking is a profession and it is there to stay. In the many years past, in 1960s and more so in the 1970s, the then City Council put up several markets, for instance, Nyayo Market in Ngara and Kenyatta Market in Ngumo Estate. We need to see what we can do. We could buy land and put up more markets so that these hawkers are given areas where they can do business. We cannot just wake up one morning and say that we do not need hawkers any more. A month ago, I buried my neighbour, a police officer, who was killed by hawkers. So, we cannot wake up one morning and say that we do not need hawkers. However, we need to plan. So let us have policies on hawking. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, provision of water in major urban centres is crucial. Where I come from, a small town council, there is no water throughout. In a year, they have water, perhaps, for only six months. We need to know, as a council and the Ministry, what we are doing. Most of those fellows running those councils have no idea what is required in those councils. So, if we are going to rely on those councillors, then we are going to fail. The parent Ministry should address the problems facing our local authorities. From there, we should find the way forward. The way forward is nothing else but giving the services that are expected of us. Without repeating---"
}