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{
    "id": 667497,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/667497/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 197,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Mohamed Diriye",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2995,
        "legal_name": "Diriye Abdullahi Mohamed",
        "slug": "diriye-abdullahi-mohamed"
    },
    "content": "country by building many roads. The economic growth we have witnessed can partly be attributed to the fact that the road network was hugely expanded by His Excellency the former President, Mwai Kibaki. Honestly, I wish the current Government would follow the footsteps of Kibaki and Raila. I am sure it was not Kibaki alone. It must have been the Prime Minister and the President collaborating and coordinating together to have our roads done well. The only thing that pains me as an individual is that much as a lot of progress has been done in terms of tarmacking and opening areas, the Wajir-Garissa-Nairobi Highway up to Mandera, which was a B9 Road and has been proposed to become an “A” road, has never been tarmacked. My colleagues are now advocating for the tarmacking of feeder roads connecting villages, district headquarters, locations and divisions yet some parts of this country do not even have a tarmacked national highway. It is important for the Government to come up with an innovative way of funding, not only from the fuel levy fund, but also from the proposed annuity programme or other ways even if it means taking money from the rich companies, imposing extra tax or whatever name the Government will give it, to tarmack these roads. The Government should come up with very diverse ways of raising funds to tarmack these roads. Fifty-five years of Independence there is no way roads connecting Nairobi to provinces all the way to Ethiopia and Somalia can remain untarmacked. If the Government can raise funds from any source, even raising extra tax on those who earn high income, this will be very important. One of the main problems that we have in the roads subsector in this country is corruption, especially between contractors, the Ministry and the specialised agencies like the KeNHA, KeRRA and KURA. The roads sub-sector has become a cash cow for contractors and an avenue for eating money because everybody wants to get road construction contracts. When the provisions of the Bill come into effect, the first thing this Authority should do is to check corruption and vet contractors properly. If we give 40 per cent to the proposed KeNHA, 32 per cent to the KeNSRA, 15 per cent to the county governments and 10 per cent goes to the Cabinet Secretary for his or her discretion for emergencies, that is a very fair way and we can develop a lot. The only impediment for growth is corruption, bottlenecks at the Ministry level and cowboy contractors. Those are the areas that we need to improve on. One last thing, I have seen that the person to head the proposed authorities and the boards is a holder of a degree in engineering. That is one area that we will be proposing amendments because the person managing KeNHA or KeNSRA is not the engineer doing the roads. We can have a manager holding an MBA or a management degree instead of locking out others. It looks like the bureaucrats in the Ministry who drafted the Bill are locking out other qualified Kenyans. If we have a finance manager in KeNHA or KURA who holds a Finance Degree or an MBA, nothing prevents him or her from becoming the managing director. He is not the one supervising the construction of roads on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, why only have a holder of a degree in Civil Engineering? One can have an MBA. I support the Bill."
}