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"id": 603021,
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"content": "During campaigns, I used to say that Kenyans must know who they elect. We need leaders who when you tell them that today we did not eat, they will not ask you whether you had lost the key to the food store. These are things that are real in our society. There are people if you tell them you had no meal yesterday, they will ask you if you had lost appetite and yet you had no food. There is no reason in this country for anyone to go without a meal. Madam Temporary Speaker, there is no reason for people to have their houses after a rain deluge of eight hours, storm waters wash away someone’s residence and the whole family succumbs to death. Obviously, that was not a house. Sen. (Eng.) Muriuki will tell you that a house built with proper construction standards cannot crumble because rain has poured for three days. They crumble because they were not houses, in the first place, but structures which looked like houses. We cannot accept Kenyans to live in this kind of squalor 51 years after Independence. Sen. Hassan with his rich human rights background is spot on. As this country moves to the mineral and oil economy, unless we legally and constitutionally obligate leaders to take responsibility for the people they govern, we are headed to the famous JM phrase of a country with 10 millionaires and 10 million beggars. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we are moving towards a situation where those who are building palatial homes and runways will be parking three or four jets ready to take off when there is trouble and leave Kenya in bigger trouble when Kenyans cannot live decently. We, as a country, must make sure that for avoidance of doubt, Article 19 and particularly 43 of the Constitution obligates the Government to this fundamental statement that every person without exception whether it is an El Molo or somebody from Vanga, Mandera or Bungoma, where most of our public resources are going to wheelbarrows without exception, shall have the highest attainable standards of health which include the right to health care services and reproductive health. Every person shall be accessible to adequate housing and to reasonable standards of sanitation. Madam Temporary Speaker, you have represented a constituency in Nairobi. Apart from living in Nairobi, the big city, I disagreed with my colleagues from Mombasa that when we talk about revenue sharing, those who said Nairobi should not be given any money, that there are more people in Nairobi than other parts of this country. The poor in Kibera, Mathare, Korogocho, Mukuru kwa Njenga, Mukuru Kayaba, Dagoreti, Kiamaiko and everywhere lead more abject and desolate lives than the poor in the rural areas. After all, in the rural areas, we still have the privilege and opportunity of rudely interrupting a meal at a neighbour’s house and participating in it. You cannot do that in Nairobi. In The Concubine by Elechi Amadi, there is a character called Wodu Wakiri who was notorious for rudely interrupting his neighbour’s meals. All he did was to stand as the wind blew to smell an aroma of “ ugali ” before walking straight to the house where the aroma came from. He would join in and eat with the rest. We are Africans. In the rural areas, if I walked into your house and found you eating, I would simply wash my hands and join you, without even waiting to be invited. 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."
}