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{
    "id": 769039,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/769039/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 145,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Such an accident would never occur if you have sewerage system in such an urban area, but we do not have this. We must have somebody to bite the bullet. Rich people who want to enjoy the tranquility and privacy of Lavington are running away from there today. Some are running away to the park to risk living with lions because they have their properties there but the local authority gives a licence and approval to somebody to build a skyscraper next to them. Their families or guests cannot sit by their swimming pool, half-naked as rich people do and enjoy their ambience. It is not possible. Madam Temporary Speaker, I am sure that in your public duty, you have visited Malaysia. At independence, Malaysia was poorer than Kenya. It was full of slums. The last time I went to Malaysia, my security during my tour was an inspector of police who told me that he had resigned from his job as a bank manager to join the police force because they pay better and there is better housing. As we speak today, Malaysia, as a country, is a better example. If you go to New York, you will find Harlem and all manner of places with criminal gangs and so on. Malaysia, as a developing country, has no single slum. This is because of planning and paying fidelity to their planning. In Kenya, we have a paper like this which has extravagant language and romantic ideas but those ideas are as good as we shall talk about them. When we finish, five years later, another Cabinet Secretary in the same Ministry will bring another policy just to appear to be working. It is not because they want to change anything. They just want to appear to be working. That is where our problem lies. Twenty years ago, this country started a slum upgrading policy. We are the headquarters of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for the whole world. What happened to slum upgrading? I am very sure that my distinguished colleague sitting across was a Permanent Secretary in one of the ministries relating to infrastructure. Billions and billions of shillings have been sunk in slum upgrading. The result is that more and more slums have grown. Squalor has increased in the slum. Human waste is the order of the day in the slums. Flying toilets in the slums are a daily hazard. Kibera is a real estate if we are serious as a country. This is not about blame games. When I say these things here, my colleagues across the Floor sometimes start behaving as if they are being electrocuted. It is as if you are attacking them. We are offering a critique against ourselves. Kibera is massive real estate. You can compress Kibera onto less than 10 or 20 acres with proper planning, condominiums, facilities, schools, dispensaries, and police lines. The police lines are not for the police who brutalise people the way we were being brutalized but for police who maintain law and order. You can imagine what that will be. Majority of those people who live in Kibera are squatters on public land. We can consciously change the lives of our brothers and sisters living in Kibera, Mukuru kwa Njenga, Mathare and all the slums that we know. Instead of that happening, we have lip service yet money is set aside. You saw the scandal that was the National Youth Service (NYS). Some Cabinet Secretary was supposed to make roads in Kibera and instead of going to improve the lives of Kibera residents, you go there to play politics and attack Raila. You tell the people that he was a Member of Parliament and what did he do? That is not the issue. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}