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"content": "we pass this Motion with the amendment, as we have proposed, we shall save ourselves a lot of money and introduce tremendous efficiency in our communication system. Madam Temporary Speaker, I was just looking at the counties in the Lake Basin; what I call the Lake Basin counties of Nyamira, Kisii, Migori, Homa Bay, Kisumu, Siaya, Busia, Kakamega and Bungoma. If you put these nine counties together, they have about nine million people. If you look at it geographically they are easily interconnected by railways, which is much cheaper than roads. If you mix roads and railroads, it is even cheaper. Then, if you add the lake in transporting goods from Kisumu to Sio Port, Homa Bay and so on, you would even cut the tremendous cost that we now incur of going by road from Kisumu to Homa Bay. It does not make sense when you can spend a shorter time having marine transport from Kisumu to Homa Bay. I do believe that the East African Railways and Harbours in those days was conscious of this, and that is why they developed maritime transport in the lake. Once you have the concept of roads and railroads, you will easily use maritime transport, because when you are moving heavy goods from Kisumu to Homa Bay, you will use less resources doing them on the lake rather than using the roads. We have always thought of access roads to the rural areas and mentally, we have always been prepared to think of these roads as earth roads, but it is much more expensive to maintain these earth roads than if we made them tarmac roads. It is in the rural that there is little traffic but whenever it rains, whatever traffic, be it cars, motorbikes or bicycles is endangered. Immediately after the rains, the roads are usually impassable so they have to be maintained. If you look at the amount of money used by the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) or the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LAFT) - it is a lot of money. If that money was projected ahead of time and used to make tarmac roads, I tell you we would have spent less money doing infrastructure in the rural areas than we are doing at the moment. The idea that came to us of rural access roads in the 1970s, I think people like Sen. G.G. Kariuki are responsible for it, the mentality should end and we should think of having proper roads in the rural areas which are less expensive than earth roads. As Sen. Wetangula was saying, the technology of making roads using soil is available and has been used elsewhere but personally, I would rather go the rail road’s way and the tarmac roads way even in the rural areas because they last long. If you go to Lang’ata and Kileleshwa, there are access roads done by the colonialists. Those roads have existed up to today. In a place like Woodley Estate, I have never seen the City Council of Nairobi going to Woodley to repair the tarmac roads there. This used to happen because there was no corruption and the traffic used to be light. So, why do we give people earth roads rather than build access roads like the mzungu did here using tarmac which has lasted for over 50 years? Mr. Speaker, Sir, this Senate should help in the thinking process of the nation and help the counties build infrastructure by adopting this Motion as amended by me. Just to remind the House, I moved that the Motion be amended by- (a) inserting the words “and rail-roads” after the word “road” and “roads” in the second line. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}