Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 518095,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/518095/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 433,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mwaura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13129,
        "legal_name": "Isaac Maigua Mwaura",
        "slug": "isaac-mwaura"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, hon. Deputy Speaker. I rise to support the Report of the Committee. If we look at the history of the world, you realise that in the days of the medieval ages, we had great cities like the twin cities in Greece of Sparta and Athens. Coming to the modern society, it is very interesting because even with the development of the westphalian model of the state, we are kind of going back to that. I was taken aback sometime back when I was in London to realise that the economy of London was growing while that of the rest of the United Kingdom was down. The same case was happening in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is also true of Kenya. If you look at our headquarters, you are told that more than 60 per cent of the economy is within the greater Nairobi area. That tells you the importance of a headquarters. Now, the spirit of devolution is to bring services closer to the people. Indeed, with the advent of devolved system of Government, we have started to hear of new places like Habaswein and Rumuruti; places that we would not have heard of before. The trend has of course been necessitated by the fact that even at the macro-level, it is important to have decongestion of our capital cities. Right now most of us will agree that Nairobi is becoming a nightmare. In fact, the situation has been exacerbated by the fact that fuel prices have gone down and so everybody who has middle-class inclination or imagination is driving to and from work and that is affecting everybody. Even some of the infrastructure that was created ostensibly to help the situation is now filled up and a good case is Thika Road. Hon. Deputy Speaker, the practice all over the world has been that it is important to have two headquarters: the commercial headquarters and the political headquarters. A case in point is our neighbouring Tanzania where you have Dar es Salaam as the commercial headquarters and Dodoma as the seat of Government. In South Africa you have Pretoria as the seat of Government and Cape Town as the seat of Parliament. In the USA, New York is the capital and Washington, DC is the political capital. This trend has moved very fast and these are discussions that have been coming time and again with regard to our country, if for example, we were to separate Nairobi to be a commercial capital and get a political capital even if it is just a smaller city closer here. Therefore, we cannot overstate the gains of development. What I find very interesting with the proposal from the Senate is that the Senate is speaking to the issue of an urban area where they do not expressly talk about a specific town. I have a problem 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."
}