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"id": 241933,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Raila",
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"legal_name": "Raila Amolo Odinga",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for the opportunity. I rise to support the Motion as amended. I had the opportunity to be in charge of housing for some time during the life of this Parliament and, therefore, what I am going to say comes out of personal experience. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we took over Government, we made a promise to the people of Kenya that the Government was going to respond to the shortage of housing which has been occasioned by a poor housing policy for very many years. We talked of constructing 150,000 housing units per year. When we promised this, we did not mean that the Government itself was going to construct 150,000 houses, but that it was going to facilitate this process. I still believe that dream is actually realisable. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will see that most of our urban centres are littered with slums. If you take the example of Nairobi City, 60 per cent of its residents live in slums, and the situation is not different in Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and so on. Why is this so? The reason is 2184 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 19, 2006 because since Independence the Government stopped construction of new houses in our cities and towns. We have gone through a process of rural-urban migration. This is not something that is only confined to Kenya. It is a universal phenomenon that people move from the rural to the urban areas. Therefore, this is something that the Government should have been adequately prepared to respond to. Since the Government did not respond to it, the slums have continued to proliferate in our cities because of the shortage of houses, and unscrupulous businessmen have taken full advantage of this by charging extortionate rents in most of those estates. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, an example is Kibera Estate which is not far away from here. The rents in Kibera have continued to increase at an alarming rate. Over a short period of time, the rents have gone up by 300 per cent. They had reached a stage where the residents there could not afford to pay any more rents. That is the reason why we had violence and resistance to pay because these unscrupulous landlords came to evict the tenants and yet they had nowhere else to go. This is again something not new to this country. You remember we had a similar thing in Soweto in South Africa. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am surprised that this same Government can try to devise a scheme to evict the residents of an estate like Kibera. I said here last week that the Minister of State for Administration and National Security chaired a meeting where he gave directions that people should be evicted from their houses in Kibera, and also ordered policemen to go and acquire the only open space in that area, supposedly for construction of houses for the Administration Police (AP) officers. The Minister of State for Administration and National Security does not deal with housing. We have a Minister who is fully in charge and I want him to confirm to the House if he has delegated his responsibility to the Minister of State for Administration and National Security because the latter does not have anything to do with it. Due to this directive, several people were wounded when the policemen went there and tried to construct the so-called low cost housing for the AP officers. This is the only open space in that slum where people can assemble over the weekend to pray. When people die, the residents assemble there to raise funds. They also hold meetings there. It is supposedly that this directive was issued because Raila Odinga all the time holds barazas there. Even in slums people are allowed to hold barazas . Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in supporting this Motion, I am confident that if this is realised--- I know that once we pass this Motion, nothing is going to happen. The Minister is going to be frustrated because he will not get the fund. But this will help the poor people to be able to construct their houses so that they do not have to depend on these shylocks who keep on continuing to exploit them. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to talk about Madaraka Estate which was constructed over 30 years ago. The residents of the estate have paid rent for those structures for several years, and yet there is a scheme, and the Minister knows about it, to try to deny these people the right to purchase those houses. I want to urge the Minister, and I am saying this because I have written a letter to him, to take this matter in his own hands and be fully in charge and ensure that these houses are sold to the people at a price that is affordable to them. The Government should also ensure that these people access funds to be able to pay mortgage. There is a plan to get some unscrupulous businessmen to come in supposedly to provide funding, but then basically to rob these people of their right and then go and make a kill by selling these houses at the so-called commercial prices. Some of the people there are supposed to be retiring, but the Minister should know that even retirees have a right to shelter because it is a fundamental human right that should not be denied somebody merely because he has reached retirement age. I urge the Minister to cancel the advertisement which was made in the media, giving certain deadlines, until proper negotiations are held between the Ministry and the other July 19, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2185 stakeholders, including the elected representatives, so that we come up with an amicable solution to this matter. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in Mr. Gumo's Westlands Constituency we have slums. We also have slums in Mathare, Kariobangi, Embakasi and Mukuru Kayaba. It is possible to improve the living conditions in those slums. The slum upgrading project that we started with the UN Habitat needs to be fast-tracked. Kibera was just supposed to be an experiment, yet the project has stalled there. The Ministry needs to move with speed to ensure that the slum upgrading programme in our country is implemented in order to alleviate the suffering of the people of our country. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}