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"id": 612858,
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"content": "water. The water in New York is cheaper than even water in Kikuyu Township, Ongata Rongai or even in the villages. Clause 10 talks about the fees payable and eventual charges; as it runs through the Bill, it must be nominal because water must be a subsidy from the State. Even when you go to the rural areas of Kiambu, Naivasha or Bungoma, where there is piped water and meters to families, I would expect a regulation that sets the bare minimum for each family to pay so that we do not have a meter running and find a family with no income being told to pay Kshs5,000 a month. There are families in this country that do not earn even Kshs500 a month or a year. There are families that live in Kibera, Korogocho and Mathare slums. Apart from reciting the provisions of the Constitution that everybody is entitled to clean water and good sanitation, poor neighborhoods should be entitled under the law to free provision of water. We can charge a few neighbourhoods like Muthaiga, Spring Valley, Karen and others, those who are on national water grid, money that can then help the poor to get water for free. However, as it is, we are defining and handling water as if it is a commodity for sale. If we start selling a commodity, then water is not different from oxygen. We will very soon start charging a levy for people who breath free oxygen in a free atmosphere, which may not be very helpful. Madam Temporary Speaker, I would want the Mover of the Bill to disengage from the Senator for Kiambu so that he can follow the proceedings. This Bill creates too many boards which are a creation of bureaucracy. I have counted close to four boards at the national level in water management. We are making it very difficult to manage our water resources, because when you have a board here, and where you have a water basin, the Bill is providing for setting up a board. So, if you have four or five water basins in one county, you have four or five water boards. Those boards are going to be heavy on expenditure; on the usual vices of corruption and they are going to create bottlenecks instead of making it easy for the management of the water resources. I would expect, and I want to encourage the Mover of the Bill, that both himself and the Committee responsible to make a provision that county governments shall also legislate to manage their own water resources provided those legislations will not be in conflict with the national interest, particularly where water is a trans-boundary resource. For example, if you go to the county of the distinguished Senator for Kirinyaga, all those swift rivers; River Tiba and others, running down, we cannot leave it to Kirinyaga to deal with River Tiba alone. It has to be in collaboration with the national Government because that, eventually empties into Tana River, where we have Masinga Dam, Gitaru, Kamburu and all those electricity generating facilities. We want to see major involvement by way of legislation at county level on how to manage water. Madam Temporary Speaker, let me turn to Clause 17 where I want my brother, the Senate Majority Leader, to appreciate, and agree with me that boards and authorities we set up, must recruit their own staff to work for them. Why is the Government bringing good law on one hand here, and bad law in relation to the Office of the Auditor-General, on the other? On a matter of the Auditor-General, the same Government that is giving boards under water authority to recruit their own staff is taking away a constitutional body’s authority; the Office of the Auditor-General, from recruiting staff. It says that 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."
}