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{
    "id": 497029,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/497029/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 268,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Onyura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 12833,
        "legal_name": "Michael Aringo Onyura",
        "slug": "michael-aringo-onyura"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I am hoping that the country will take advantage of this good Bill. It is very comprehensive and fairly extensive to ensure that we are able to provide water to everybody. It has already been commented that successive regimes have been promising water. We waited for it in the year 2000. That year came and passed. I think the then Government must have talked of 2010. I am hoping that the current regime will ensure that by 2030 the promise of clean water for everybody will be realised. They should put in every effort to, at least, disprove those who are now saying “ tangi ni cheque;” then, that is not likely to happen until 3020. I think we will have a good law. What is important is that we make use of this law to ensure that this very essential commodity is made available to everybody in the country. Indeed, the Constitution does emphasise that provision of water is part of human rights. The Government is, therefore, very much under an obligation to provide it. The issue of conservation of water is very important and it needs to be addressed with the seriousness it deserves. We need to ensure that we use all the appropriate technology that is available, first of all, for harvesting water and for preserving it. We are fairly wasteful with water. God has endowed us with a lot of rain. You will find that no matter how much we suffer--- When it rains too much, we suffer floods, overflows and so on. When it is dry, again we suffer because we allow water that we should have harvested and preserved to drain away into the soil or into the rivers, lakes and oceans. This is an area that we need to address very seriously. We can learn good practices that take place in other parts of the world. Many leaders at various levels from different parts of the country go all over the world looking for benchmarking and best practices. However, when they come back you do not see that knowledge applied despite the fact that maybe quite a bit of money has been used to visit places that have mastered this art. This may be because either we do not learn very quickly, or we do not have the will to apply what we learn. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, this sector demands that we invest a lot of money in it, given its importance. One of the areas we really need to invest money in, in the water sector is the rehabilitation of the different water points and sources. If you go to various rural areas, you will find there are many rivers, wells and springs which our people have been using over time. However, they are getting degraded. We need to put in money, so that we can rehabilitate them and preserve them for use by our people. I do not know what happens in terms of water supply. You find some fairly big budget projects starting in counties in different areas. However, a lot of money put into them goes to waste. Maybe the system works for a few months. If you are lucky, it might go for about a year and then it just collapses. There is a lot of inefficiency, negligence and lack of consistency. This needs to be looked into, so that where something has been done it can be maintained, and the investment put into such a project is made beneficial to the people. It is really sad to find that a lot of money is pumped into a water project. It starts but within a short time it has collapsed, and then there is no water for the population. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}