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{
    "id": 682756,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/682756/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 575,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon (Eng.) Gumbo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 24,
        "legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
        "slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
    },
    "content": "such that it cannot attract and retain qualified staff. It is no secret that some of the operators like KQ today have better aircraft engineers and air-worthiness inspectors than KCAA. That is a dichotomy and inversion of things. It should never be that way. It is being rumoured that sometimes for the KCAA to do proper inspections they have to depend on experts from the same people that they are supposed to oversee. How then do you have an aviation industry that can be trusted? In fact, Hon. Duale has just spoken to the fact that some Members of the KCAA Board are actually board members of these airlines. How then do you oversee yourselves? It is always dangerous when an operator appears to have more muscle than the industry regulator. We have argued about this on Floor of this House before. Remember in the last Parliament I brought an issue with an airline called “JetLink” which decidedly has gone under. One of the things we were questioning at that time is whether KCAA had the power and the capacity to weed out people who were putting defective aircrafts in our airspace like JetLink. One of the things that we spoke about was the issue of landing fees. If you look at the proportion of the landing fees and how it is being shared between the KAA and the KCAA, you will find that it is inverted. This is because landing, as Hon. Wambugu will tell you, is a function of instruments. The KAA is just nothing but a facilities manager. It just provides the tarmac and all the other things that go with the facility. Why on earth would the KAA take more landing fees than the KCAA? If anything it should be KCAA which should decide on how much landing fees should be. Landing is a function of the instruments. If your radar is not working and your frequencies are not right, you will not land. The airplane will crash land. That is the least that can happen. We also have the passenger service charge. How is it being shared between these two entities? I think the industry regulator ought to take most of that money. Air travel is growing very fast. The other day, I was discussing with a member of my family about when I first flew in the late 1980s. Those days, there was the Fokker F27 with a passenger capacity of 27. There were only two flights to Kisumu - that was in the morning and in the evening - and only five people would fly from Kisumu. Today, there are about four flights to Kisumu and three airlines and each of those flights are full. Air travel is becoming a mode of transport preferred by many because of our way of life. This Bill is good, but let us strengthen the industry regulator so that we can be sure that the operators in this sector abide by the law and the rules of the game. I support."
}