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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this very important Vote. I want to support the Minister and commend him for the very able manner in which he initiated debate on this Vote. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Ministry of Local Government is very important. Local authorities are the basis of democracy. We must build our local institutions for them to contribute to our well-being. That is where we nurture and develop leadership. Therefore, we should give opportunity to councillors to enable them contribute to the development of this country. However, we must start where the matter starts. What kind of local authorities do we want? Do we want a multiplicity of tiny local authorities spread all over the country or viable entities that can give services to our people? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I believe in the 1970s, there was a commission formed, led by Mr. Omamo, to look into the possibilities of enhancing the performance of local authorities and ensure that they are viable. To date, as far as I am concerned, the Report of that commission has never been made public. We need to find out whether the Minister can refer to the same report and bring about viability of local authorities; 175 of them which range from Nairobi City Council, which is large, although made up of councillors who we are sometimes ashamed of, to tiny little local authorities which can hardly stand on their own. That is why I am giving the Minister a challenge. We need to rationalise our local authorities. We need to find out whether they are viable or not. There was a time in this country when we amalgamated several districts to form a viable local authority. We once had the Waren County Council and others which were put together, as different entities to form one local authority. We should revert to that system and establish local authorities. If every time a new district is formed - and recently we have seen new districts being formed on the basis of ethnicity and requests by politicians--- If administratively they are handled well, local authorities can afford to pay the salaries of District Commissioners and other civil servants. In terms of being viable, there are many local authorities which cannot generate income on their own and run without any assistance, yet we establish them as separate local authorities. I challenge the Minister to look into the basis on which our local authorities operate. Some of them do not need to be on their own. In terms of the calibre of the councillors we have, the Minister himself, in his concluding remarks, alluded to the recent wrangles we have been seeing in the election of mayors and chairmen of county councils. There was a time when we had civic fathers in this country. That was when we had people like Charles Rubia, Isaac Lugonzo, Margaret Kenyatta, Elijah Musumba in Mombasa, Lesiew in Eldoret and Ezra Gumbe in Kisumu among others. Those were civic fathers one would be proud of. They were people who were businessmen in their own light and became elders or councillors, merely because of the service they wanted to give to people. The calibre of councillors we have at the moment leaves a lot to be desired. One of the elements the Omamo Report I referred to was looking into was the probity of the councillors. That had to do with the level of their education. We said, in the Report, that the minimum level of education should be at least the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), if not \"O\" level so that when they were holding council meetings, councillors would contribute to debate and have some level of probity on their own so that they are not bribed and cajoled in order to give services. That is a matter which the Minister needs to address. The standards and integrity of the councillors we have in our local authorities leaves a lot to be desired. That is why we have constant problems in the application of by-laws. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to comment on some of the points that have August 1, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2487 been raised by my colleagues, especially poor standards in building and approval of plans. Sometimes, we ask too much from the councillors, yet they do not understand. It is not the planning that is bad; it is the development control that is not applied. It is not the fault of the city planners. I worked in the Ministry in the past, and I could see us planning, but when it came to time of control in terms of densities and plot ratios, I realised that we were asking too much from councillors because their level of understanding is not that high. They would, therefore, be easily manipulated by developers. In cities, especially in the City of Nairobi, developers are looking for the maximum value for the little money they have. Some of them want to build without considering the required standards. We then end up with a situation like the one we had in Juja Road the other day. We ought to begin to upgrade the level of councillors we have, to be able to apply standards so that we do not end up with the cluttering of illegal developments we have all over the place. I believe that if we were to insist on a basic standard for one to become a councillor, we would overcome some of the problems we have in this country. The question of LATF money has been referred to. It is a very noble idea to take development resources to local areas where councillors know what needs to be given priority. However, in some of the local authorities, we have had misappropriation of the funds. Most of it ends up paying salaries. Sometimes, the money is dished out to councillors to carry out projects like building of bridges or construction of roads but eventually, it ends up being misused. I know of a case of one councillor who gave the money to his construction firm and did a very shoddy job. So, in the same manner, we are trying to request that the CDF money be utilised properly, we should also make sure that LATF and LASDAP money is used properly, so that wananchi can get the services they deserve. I want to commend the Minister for the changes we are seeing in Nairobi, particularly along major highways. We have been seeing projects going on as we drive from the airport through Uhuru Highway. There are many projects going on, like tree planting and gardens being put up. That is a plus for the Minister and we should encourage him. He should also encourage those people who are in charge of other cities like Mombasa and Kisumu and other smaller towns like Nakuru and Eldoret to do the same. Those are laudable efforts and we should commend him for that. On the issue of street lighting, which is being carried out as a partnership between the private sector and the Ministry, we should commend the Minister for it. Those are the kind of efforts we want to see being put in a more diversified manner. In the same way, where we cannot provide services, let us privatise. We should not assume that local authorities can provide all the services on their own. Some of them are not able due to lack of professional know-how and competence and quite often, application of those efforts. Where work can be done by the private sector, let us privatise the services. Let us work in partnership with the private sector to make sure that we beautify our cities and towns. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, the congestion in Nairobi, particulary, the traffic management is getting out of hand and we should address it. It is affecting people from wherever they are coming from. If one is coming from Kasarani or Limuru, they are likely to take three hours to get to their places of work. It is even getting worse day by day. This is not because we do not have good roads; it is because of traffic mismanagement. We must apply some precautions right now. If we do not, in the next three years, we will not be able to move. I beg to support."
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