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{
    "id": 419429,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/419429/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 123,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "beyond. These should be taken off the road to the railway. This would be more cost efficient and effective. Some time, last year, I spent a week in a city called New Orleans in the USA. I witnessed a goods train passing by the hotel I was staying. The goods train went past our hotel for 45 good minutes, one goods train. I stood by the window to watch the goods it was pulling. This was mainly petroleum and other things. It went for 45 minutes; a very long time. That kind of a train can only run on a line which is stable. Those talking about this old lunatic line being modernized do not know what they are talking about. The lunatic line was built at a time when technology was very backward and people could not go through certain ingredients as they do today. They did very well because they built tunnels like the one in Limuru which used to be a wonder for us who were going to Alliance High School many years ago. Those tunnels were works of wonder those days. However, now they are not because technology has improved so much. When you are building railways, the alignment becomes very important because that determines how long your trains can pull goods. So, it is important that we build a new standard gauge railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, Kisumu, Busia, Kitale and Kampala. We made these proposals under the economic recovery strategies for wealth and employment creation when I was the Minister for Planning and National Development. In fact, at that point in time, we proposed not only a standard gauge railway going all the way to eastern Congo but a double carriage way road. A double carriage way is good for safety. One reason we are losing our people on our roads is because we have these single lanes we refer to as highways. It is criminal to call a road from Nairobi to Kisumu a highway when it is a single lane. It is not a highway. Where is the “highness” and where is the “way?” If we really want this Committee to do its job, let what is being done be commensurate to the name of the Committee; Energy, Roads and Transportation. I will tell you that we are pennywise and pound foolish by putting so many luggages on the road from Mombasa to Nairobi. However well you build that road, once it is doing the work that a railway should be doing, it will break down. You can say that you will put policemen on the way with all the weighbridges, however, you know our problems. Policemen will take bribes and let very heavy lorries pass through and ruin our roads. They are doing this every day. We need to make very strong recommendations regarding our emergency programme. Our emergency programme should be the building of the road from Mombasa-Nairobi-Kisumu-Busia and even to Eldoret as a double carriageway, a real highway all the way to Uganda and eastern Congo. I know that there has been a lot of debate about the standard gauge railway. Kenyans are not opposed to the standard gauge railway. What Kenyans are avoiding is doing it at a cost that our generation and the generation after us will not afford. We do not want to pass on to our children and our children’s children a debt they cannot pay. This is a question of cost. We must also ask the other question. Why is it that the cost is higher than the international standards? If you go to the internet these days, you can benchmark the cost of anything. You can benchmark the cost of a pen, the cost of going to a nightclub and even that of doing a railway line. Kenyans are raising these issues and it is incumbent upon the Government to explain. 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."
}