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"id": 253018,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Kimeto",
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"legal_name": "Anthony Kimeto",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move the following Motion:- THAT, in view of Kenya's commitment to equitable development of all regions in the country; taking cognizance of communication as an engine of economic growth; noting that different forms of transport require proper planning and co-ordination; this House urges the Government to develop and implement a comprehensive transport policy to provide a framework for infrastructural development throughout the country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, our road network is poor. Many roads in our country like the Mombasa-Kisumu Highway have a lot of potholes. If you travel to Nakuru you will encounter a lot of potholes. It appears as if the Government is not rectifying the problem. A lot of accidents are occurring due to the poor state of our roads. Engineers must work and ensure that all roads are made passable. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you travel to Nakuru you will find construction workers using a small machine to tarmac the road. They should use a bigger machine given the weight of the big lorries that move along this road. These big lorries spoil the road thus making it completely impassable. We need good road engineers to build better roads which can handle the weight of big lorries amounting to over 50,000 metric tonnes. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister for Roads and Public Works should be an individual who has technical expertise on issues of construction of roads. He or she should be able to know, for example, that a road constructed in a certain manner can only handle vehicles of certain weight. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the railway network in this country was constructed in the 1900s. To date, no expansion has been done on our railway line system. We attained Independence 43 years ago and it is quite unfortunate that we have never thought of expanding the railway line system. If you visit Europe, for example, you will find that their railway line system is the state-of-the-art. Their railway line system is widely spread to industrial areas for ease of distribution of already manufactured goods. However, there are no plans to expand the railway line system to cater for manufactures in this country. If we expand our railway line network to the farming areas of this country such as the tea-growing zones of Kericho, this would highly assist our farmers. Kericho, which is one of the leading tea-growing areas, lacks a proper railway line system to cater for the growing transport needs. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if you look at the case of the pastoralists, livestock for slaughter are transported from the northern parts of this country by road. This is tedious and time consuming. Sometimes animals die in the process of April 19, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 551 transportation. If we had a proper railway line network in that area, this would reduce the many problems pastoralists experience when transporting their animals. We need to have proper infrastructure in this country. I would like to urge the Minister for Roads and Public Works to really think about the people of North Eastern Province especially with regard to the poor state of roads. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, Some hon. Members have spoken about the loss of animals from the pastoralists communities as a result of the drought that this country experienced recently. If we had proper infrastructure, some of those animals would have been transported to Nairobi for slaughter or sale. The Minister for Roads and Public Works should also ensure that roads in all constituencies are in order. We need to be able to traverse from one constituency to another without experiencing any problems. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also need airstrips in most parts of this country. The existing airstrips should also be well maintained since they help small planes to fly people and goods from one area to another. The airstrips in the North Eastern Province, for example, are in such a dilapidated state that it is difficult for planes to take off or land. The Government should have plans of repairing and maintaining existing airstrips. The Government should also increase the number of airstrips especially in areas where they are highly needed. The small planes that land in some of these airstrips are used for emergency cases, for example, by the flying doctors, to assist the sick who need urgent medical help."
}