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{
    "id": 583621,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/583621/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 265,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "September 17th, 2015 SENATE DEBATES 42 Sen. Sang",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I take this opportunity to congratulate the Mover of this Motion. I also note that Sen. Kittony has worked so hard the whole afternoon giving responses to several statements sought from her Committee, and now moving a very important Motion. Looking at her age, the energy that she continues to exude in this House is a clear indication that age is just, but a number. I support this Motion. For a very long time, the leadership of this country has not been bold enough to deal with some of these serious challenges facing this country. It takes you 40 minutes by flight from Eldoret to Nairobi – a distance of over 400 kilometres. When you land at the airport in Nairobi, it takes you an average of between three and a half to five hours to reach the city centre. This is to the extent that it makes no sense to choose to fly when it will actually take you about five hours to drive your way from Eldoret to Nairobi. That is the absurdity that we are facing in this country because of this traffic congestion. If you were to leave the city centre right now on your way to the airport or Karen where Sen. Kittony lives, it will take them about three hours to get there. Sen. M. Kajwang and I are still ambitious that one of these fine days we will live where Sen. Mugo and Sen. Kittony reside. We have serious Kenyans working so hard all the way to 5.00 p.m. and instead of taking about 15 to 20 minutes to get home and spend time with their family, they take three to four hours. These are the serious challenges that we must be able to confront. If you have a patient in an estate and some emergency arises and they require the services of an ambulance, may be from Mater Hospital to Lang’ata or from Parklands to Nairobi Hospital, it will take one and a half hours for the ambulance to come, and another one and half to go back. Three hours, that cannot be an emergency. That is almost the same time it will get you to get a patient from Kenya to South Africa. We must be serious in addressing some of these challenges. We are a country that engages in a lot of unnecessary trial and error. The other day, Governor Kidero tried with the proposed elimination of certain roundabouts using drums. But why are we engaged in a process of trial and error when we have universities in this country, we have had research done on a lot of these things? We are now told that they want to turn some of the streets within the Central Business District (CBD) into one way streets. Why are we engaged in trial and error? We have the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University, Jomo Kenyatta University and we have engineers and researchers in this country. Why can we not utilize them so that we do not engage in a process of trial and error? We should be able to do actual research and provide a solution in this country that addresses a lot of these issues, so that we do not wake up tomorrow to find Kenyatta Avenue is a one way street, Haile Selassie is a single way street and when we find out that it does not work, we try to eliminate roundabouts. We need to use the research work that has been done. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, being a professional engineer yourself, this country has had support from World Bank on how to tackle some of these challenges within the CBD. But we know some of those researches are lying and gathering dust in the shelves within the County Hall and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. Why do we not we work on an implementation mechanism? We are now spending a lot of resources to build the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). Now it is no longer Nairobi City alone; if you 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."
}