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{
    "id": 320466,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/320466/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 432,
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    "content": "be done after three years and not two years. I believe this will be adequate enough. An ophthamologist will not even check whether one of your limbs is shorter yet it is a very vital organ of the body when you are driving. When many people are involved in accidents, one of their legs becomes shorter. Who will ascertain that? It should be the examiner. These are the things that we need to check. The issue of instant fines has been omitted from this Bill. I wonder whether what the Minister for Finance proposed some three years back has been thrown out of the Cabinet shelves. It was a proposal that was echoed by many of us and it has not been captured in the Bill. This is one of the ways of reducing corruption. It should be introduced in this Bill if we want to stamp out corruption from our roads. It should be very clear that the instant fines will be fair to everybody because you do not have to waste time. You just pay what you have been fined. This will assist in repairing the roads and ensure supervision. That is very important so that we can move forward. Testing the drivers annually is a bit too much. These drivers earn an average of Kshs10,000. I am an authority and I know how much they are paid. Leave alone the talk in the streets that they are paid Kshs1,000 daily, you cannot drive a vehicle for 30 days. You can only drive for four days and by the fifth day, you cannot wake up. The job requires that you wake up at 4.00 a.m. and sleep at 10.00 p.m. so, how many hours do you have for sleeping? By the third day, you will be dozing at the steering wheel. There is no way you can work for all those days. This money has to include transport, lunch and bribes for the City Council askaris, the police officers and the mungiki. All these are borne by the very same salary. It is important for us to be realistic. They do not have this kind of money. Where they enjoy protection by the employer, they are paid an average of Kshs10,000. You can quote me there as an authority. They do not enjoy more. If you want more, you are given squads daily and you run the risk of not being on the job the following morning. You also run the risk of going to Industrial Area Police Station that afternoon or being detained at Kamkunji Police Station over the weekend. These are some of the risks that are borne by the high salary. It is good for us to be aware that when we subject the drivers to some of these heavy fines, it is being unrealistic. It is because we imagine that they earn a lot of money. I can tell you for sure that that is not true. The fines are very high. For example, in Clause 30(6), we are imposing very high fines. Fines are good, but it is good for the Bill to address the fact that when the law becomes harsh and excessive, the only solution will be to create shortcuts. I am not the one who said this. It is in the books of law. Those who have read the law like the Chair, they know that that has been a very big debate everywhere. I would like to remind you of what happened with the KANU regime. Before Section 2A was scrapped, they thought that the solution to govern this country was to throw everybody to the gallows. They did it, but for how long? There was an outcry. This was all because of imposing a condition that you must be a KANU life member, dance, sing and dream KANU. At the end of the day, we never achieved anything. In fact, I wish they did not even do it. They threw people outside imagining that they would not have any other shelter, but the people ended up constructing other houses, and those houses, in form of parties, are the ones that threw KANU out. Let us not move in a direction which will make everybody look at these fines as excessive to the extent of even wanting to divert the very original agenda. The officers in that line will definitely make a kill if the fines are excessive. I am not saying that the fines are bad, but if they are excessive, they will lead to many other problems."
}