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{
"id": 721932,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/721932/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. (Eng.) Gumbo",
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"speaker": {
"id": 24,
"legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
"slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
},
"content": "Maintenance enhances habitability. It is very important that we maintain buildings because in almost every economy, they represent a very high level of investment in terms of capital, materials, labour and time. Indeed, owners and users ought to be required, by law, to maintain their properties in a good and substantial state of repair because not only will maintenance allow us to achieve our quest, but it will provide adequate housing to all Kenyans. It also improves optical dimensions of buildings and its appearances. As you will recall, there is a famous saying that a stitch in time saves nine. Any entity that is not maintained falls apart naturally. For those of us who may have been lucky to attend Chemistry classes in high school, you will recall the principle of entropy which in a nutshell states that disorder is the natural state of things. Anything which is not maintained or looked after, sooner or later, falls apart. This is a very good policy and the fact is that it covers the entire spectrum of maintenance, as my good friend and senior colleague in the distinguished profession of engineering, Eng. Mahamud, will tell you. Maintenance is not just about applying paint here and there, but it has to start from inspection, aspects of testing, planning, organising, servicing, classification to serviceability, repair, refurbishment, rebuilding, rehabilitation, reclamation, renewal, adaptation and setting standard. The built environment is very dynamic because not only is human taste evolutionary and dynamic, but even the standards are very dynamic. As any good student of engineering will tell you, for example, in the 19th Century, the gases that were used to extinguish fire over time were found to have CFC components, which were Ozone depleting. The fact that we, as an African society, do not take maintenance seriously, must stem from the fact that in most African cultures including mine, it is very difficult to find a single word for maintenance. You probably have to concoct one or two words together to arrive at something resembling maintenance. Maintenance is necessary because it must adapt to the evolutionary and the very nature of human tastes, preferences and also usability. You will realise that, for example, this building where we are in was done over 50 years ago. At that time, it was good in terms of ambience and usability, but overtime, you find, for example, that the windows which were appealing in the 1960s are not appealing any more. The wiring that was done then is not adequate for what we use because we are using more equipment. The most obvious case is in our plumbing works. Over time for steel pipes, the core gets smaller because of oxidation. Without a policy on maintenance, you will find that the services which we got in yester years are no longer possible. The National Building and Maintenance Policy is long overdue. I would want to believe that it will be made mandatory not just for urban areas, but even for rural areas because it is always a fact that it is a lot cheaper to maintain than build anew. Anything which is not maintained naturally degrades. I want to believe that if we have this policy in place, just like all other statutes which we have in this country and also run it on the back of a strict enforcement regime, we will be going a long way in ensuring adequacy of housing and infrastructure in general for our people."
}