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"content": "things: First, it makes an amendment to recognise the movement from the terminology of trust land to the terminology of community land. As you know, before the advent of the Constitution of Kenya - we keep on calling it “the new Constitution,” but I think it is now old. There used to be a regime of law among the various land related laws which used to be called the Trust Land Act, Cap.288. This Trust Land Act covered or provided the legal provisions relating to the management, control, disposal and dealing with land that belongs to the public, but under the trusteeship and the custodianship of the former local authorities. When the Constitution of 2010 came into being, land was reclassified into three categories, namely, public land, private land and community land. Mr. Speaker, Sir, under the new Constitution, Article 63, refers to land which was formerly known as trust land which was formerly vested in local authorities or county councils. Under the current Constitution and the current land laws, trust land is vested in county governments. Therefore, in a nutshell, this Miscellaneous Amendments Bill proposes to amend Cap. 284 to be in line with the constitutional regime of community land as opposed to trust land which term has been abandoned by virtue of the new Constitution. Mr. Speaker, Sir, secondly, very simple amendment, just to replace the word “Minister” in that Act with “Cabinet Secretary,” and finally, replacing the term “County Council or Local Authority with the term “County Government.” Those are very simple amendments. However, they are useful to accord Cap.284 with the Constitution and the new land legislation that is operational. Hon. Members know that in 2012, all the previous land laws were consolidated into new land legislation. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the other legislation which is amended by this Miscellaneous Amendments Bill is the Urban Areas and Cities Act of 2011. This Act is amended in three main ways: First, it is amended to adjust the population criteria for conferment of city, municipality and town status. Under the current Urban Areas and Cities Act, in terms of population, you require 500,000 people as a qualification for conferment to city status. For municipalities, the corresponding figure is 250, 000 people. For towns, it is 10,000 people. What these amendments are seeking to provide is to reduce those numbers so that in the case of city status, to reduce from 500,000 to 250,000 people. With regard to municipalities, the Bill seeks to reduce the number from 250,000 to not less than 70,000 and not more than 249,000 people. Finally, for a town status is to reduce from 10,000 to 2,000 people. Mr. Speaker, Sir, secondly, on this Urban Areas and Cities Act of 2011, it is proposed through this Bill to amend the Act to empower a county governor to confer a status of special municipality to the headquarters of a county. In many counties, the headquarters of a county is a city. In some counties, going by this definition, the headquarters of a county is a municipality. However, in some counties, including Tharaka Nithi, Nyandarua and Laikipia, where Senator No.1 represents, the headquarters are in some place which may not meet this criterion of population and other factors that are required by the Cities and Urban Areas Act to qualify as a municipality. Therefore, what this Bill tries to do is to ensure that as soon as an urban area has been declared a county headquarters that should empower the county government or the county governor in particular, to designate such an area as a special municipality. This would aid many 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."
}