Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 505344,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/505344/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 213,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Hargura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 827,
        "legal_name": "Godana Hargura",
        "slug": "godana-hargura"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this Bill. The Bill covers many Acts and that is why the views of the Members should have been sought in the relevant committees so that we can benefit from their deliberations on the same. All the same because the Chair has ruled that it will go to committees either way, I would like to give my contribution. The first one is with regard to the Trust Land Act. This Act has been used for a long time. The county councils have been using it and through it, communities have been losing their land. With the coming in of the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the trust land has been renamed community land. My expectation is that we have a completely different Act which gives a lot of authority or powers to the communities to manage their own land. That cannot be attained by changing the Trust Land Act to Community Act and, changing county council to county government because the Act is still the same. We have a county government which is more entrenched than the county councils. Therefore, we also need the communities to have more say in their land. In fact, it should be a situation whereby the communities will have titles to their land because they are the ones to make decisions on what should be set aside and what procedure should be used. They should be fully involved. There was no need of doing these cosmetic changes. We would rather, as the Senate, complete the process because we already have the Community Land Bill which has been tabled in the House. We would rather expedite that one than have these kind of cosmetic changes. For the Urban Areas and Cities Act which reduces the population, I do not get the rationale of reducing the population threshold so that we end up with more cities and municipalities. This is because if you look at what the Act is amending, in the case of cities from 500 to 250, that is just one requirement. There are many other requirements which have to be met. If you check Section 5(9) of the Act which is being amended, the population is just the first part but there are other requirements from part (a) up to (g) which that area has to meet before it can be called either a city or an urban area. It has to demonstrate the capacity to generate sufficient revenue. If you reduce the population 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."
}