Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 397033,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/397033/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 261,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "producers in my county; people extracting soapstone, people engaged in the production of fruits and sugar cane; all these fellows and their farms are located in very rough terrain. Therefore, they have to get this produce out of these farms, put it on the road in order to move it to the market, where they sell their produce in order to get earnings. This is the way they live. It is, therefore, important and paramount to enable these people to continue living by providing a good road network. That is why I am saying that the performance of county governments will largely be measured by the quality of roads they are able to develop and maintain through rehabilitation and regular maintenance. This is a very important subject. These rural roads will transform our way of life and they will lead us to a better quality of life. That is what I believe. In the year 2008, I was privileged to serve in an acting capacity as the Minister for Roads. We were together in the Ministry of Roads. At that time, management of our roads was very haphazard. People did not know who exactly was responsible for what. You will recall that we took advantage of the law that had been passed in 2007, the Kenya Roads Act, to try and streamline the operations of the roads sector. That is when we came up with the establishment of the three road Authorities. These are the Kenya Highways Authority (KeNHA) whose responsibility is the major trunk roads which were ably described by the Mover, Eng. Mositet. We also came up with the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) whose responsibility was to develop and to maintain roads within cities, municipalities and other towns. The third Authority we established was the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) which would take responsibility for the large network of roads in rural Kenya. We know that there were initial teething problems. However, the three road Authorities have been in operation for five years. Some of them have done very well. They have taken off in every respect. They have developed their own capacity, they have structures but more importantly are present in all our counties. They have access to equipment and in every respect, they are operational and have done an excellent job in my assessment. However, in 2010, Kenyans adopted a new Constitution which is now fully operational and embraced. It is guiding our lives in this country. During that exercise, Kenyans decided that roads would, in fact, be divided into two categories. One would be described as the national roads and that would be a function of the national Government. The other category would be described as county roads and the function of maintaining, rehabilitating, developing and all that would be the work of the county government. That is what the Constitution says. This means, therefore, that both these two bodies KURA and KeRRA must play different roles. They can no longer take responsibility for roads in the counties because that responsibility belongs to the county governments. That is the truth, according to our Constitution. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us, as leaders, to define the new roles for these two institutions. We need to amend the Kenya Roads Act, 2007, so that it conforms to the provisions of the current Constitution. We must begin to undertake that, as legislators in both Houses. 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."
}