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{
    "id": 505322,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/505322/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 191,
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    "content": "“county government”. That is not the problem. The pointer or the big issue here is that we have delayed so much in dealing with the Community Land Act which would have gone comprehensively in providing the mechanisms, systems and the management of community land and properly inherit what the trust land law was all about. The message is that – I am sure the Senate Majority Leader will read the HANSARD – he had come here with a Community Land Bill and the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC) and a few other people complained that it did not go through this and that. However, the right procedure was what the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. (Prof.) Kindiki was doing to come up with a Community Land Bill so that then we can discuss this issue of community comprehensively. Half of Elgeyo-Marakwet County is occupied by what we can call community land. We need to use that land for economic purposes. Some of the areas like Turkana, Pokot, Elgeyo-Marakwet, Baringo where we now have oil and Lamu where we have natural resources are under community land. The issue is; people want to sale that land, lease it to an investor or be compensated and there is no clear system. The Senate Majority Leader is here seated next to me. The thing that must be expedited is the Community Land Bill so that we can debate and pass it. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir when it comes to the Urban Areas and Cities Act, I have also listened to my colleagues giving considerations that they want to create a town, urban area, city or municipality because there is development that is hinged on that. That is not true. The Division of Revenue Act considers population and things that are not urban. You cannot manufacture urbaneness; it must be a characteristic. That characteristic includes population living in that town. Elgeyo-Marakwet, perhaps, does not even have a town because the population of the biggest or something closer to a town, say, Iten, is almost 10,000 persons during the day. However, at night, it might only have 500 people. Eldoret Town, for example, might have 200,000 or 300,000 people during the day but at night maybe only 50,000 to 100,000 people. We just have to follow what is happening all over the world. A town is a town. You do not want someone to come from the United States of America (USA) and say that he is going to Tot Municipality in Elgeyo-Marakwet County only to find that it is a shopping centre just because we want to impress the locals. I was involved in drafting this Bill and what is so interesting about the Urban Areas and Cities Act is that when we had completed drafting the Bill and said that 500,000 people and above would create a city that would have made only Nairobi and Mombasa to be the only cities in the country, when the Bill went to Parliament - I was a layman or an outsider at that time - Parliament said despite the fact that Kisumu does not have 500,000 people, it would, however, be called a city. The point I am making is that we have to stick to characteristics that are uniform. The second thing is that a city does not get conferment of a greater standard of a county. This is actually an entity of a county government. That is why Nairobi is called Nairobi City County. Mombasa is Mombasa City County. This is because they are cities and at the same time counties. When you go to Kisii, you will find Kisii Municipality which is the urban area. The law says that we should create a management board for the urban area because of the challenges we have. However, the management board is not autonomous. It is responsible and reports to the county government. That puts an extra cost to the running of the 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."
}