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{
    "id": 467672,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/467672/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 159,
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    "content": "Assembly that determines how much revenue goes to them and our job is to distribute what they have given us. So, we are subordinate to the National Assembly, the way things are now, unless we seriously consider amending this Constitution. This is what I am talking about and this is not theatrics but serious business. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me tell you a few things that make a country grow. I am privileged to be in the Committee for Energy, Roads and Transport which also deals with transport. We should have equitable distribution of energy. First of all, we must generate it and that is the job that the Senior Counsel did when he was the Minister for Energy, but we still need to generate it a little bit cheaply and then distribute it. Sen. (Prof.) Lonyangapuo knows that unless you have sufficient energy, that cement industry which they are trying to build in Pokot will not take off because nobody will put up an industry that he knows consumes so much. So, they will not bring it there. They will bring it to Athi River because that is where power is. Unless we do serious distribution of energy to all corners of this country to enable someone put up an industry in Mandera, Moyale, Garissa and so on, the situation will remain that way. The Government is not going to invest in industries there because it is not in the business of investing in industries but what it must do is provide energy everywhere. The reason why nobody can invest in Kisumu is because there is no regular, constant and sufficient energy. Even the lines that supply electricity to Kisumu are thin. If you need serious energy in Kisumu and you want to do a steel industry, you cannot put it in Kisumu because you will not have sufficient energy. The second reason why people do not invest in Kisumu is that the railway line that goes to Kisumu cannot carry a certain weight and it does not even work. So, unless you fix the railway line and distribute energy, nobody is going to invest in the third largest city in the country, Kisumu. Even in Mombasa as much as I support Sen. Hassan that it needs to be developed, nobody is going to invest there if Mombasa does not have those ingredients. You are lucky that Mombasa has at least those ingredients although they do not have sufficient power which is regular. It is irregular, eratic and costly. Unless we do something about some of these serious infrastructural things that I am talking about like energy, railway line and roads, nobody is going to invest in Kenya. The Committee in charge of energy asked the experts who are now running the executive why they have not made our energy cheaper. They told us that energy will be much cheaper and, in fact, the bills for electricity will almost be half if we develop geothermal energy. We have actually sunk so many wells for geothermal energy and I can see Sen. Martha looking at me because we were with her in Rift Valley when we were looking at these facilities. Nobody has put money, not even the Government nor the investors, to tap the electricity and sell it to the national grid because people who benefit from thermal energy, who make money when petrol is imported and used in this thermal generators, will not allow us to exploit and use cheap energy. So, this country is being taken in circles because of some rich people who do not want this country to grow because if it is grows, then they suffer. The people who are against the railway line, the standard gauge railway line which we would want to build in this country so that our goods can move quickly at 140 kilometres per hour upcountry and to Uganda and Rwanda, are saying that the railway lines do not work. This is because it will remove their trailers from the roads. These trailers are destroying our roads. We are repairing our 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."
}