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{
    "id": 775732,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/775732/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 334,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Atandi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13290,
        "legal_name": "Samuel Onunga Atandi",
        "slug": "samuel-onunga-atandi"
    },
    "content": "it financial autonomy so that they can advise the Cabinet Secretary properly. You realise today that some of our Cabinet Secretaries have not gone to school. We have appointed Cabinet Secretaries who are Standard Seven drop-outs. We need competent people to guide them on the way they can think about implementing our roads. I am not saying that my friend Macharia is illiterate; you know he is a very competent Cabinet Secretary having been my boss in the banking sector. I know he is a well-briefed man who goes out of his way to get information and do things properly. Because we are making laws for the future, in case we have another Cabinet Secretary who does not have the required basic education, we need competent people to show him a few things. The other issue that I would also like to address in this Bill is what the Chair already highlighted, namely the creation and the membership of the various authorities. He pointed out that we have many professional bodies coalescing and agreeing to be in charge of the roads sector as far as this authority is concerned. I agree with the Chairman but I want to suggest that we need some aspect of independence on the bodies that are in charge of constructing our roads. We could retain certain relevant independent bodies as an option for the President to appoint the chairmen of these authorities from and do away with the others that are irrelevant. I cannot see the relationship between the Law Society of Kenya and roads. I propose to the Committee that they need to delete that option that has been indicated there. We have other important bodies like the Kenya Institute of Planners (KIP), the Institute of Surveyors of Kenya and the Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK). Those ones are relevant to this sector because we want to have a roads sector that is well-captained and the professionals there should be capable of helping the Ministry to undertake these projects. I also want to propose within the establishment of the Public Roads Standards Board, that the chairman of this board must not be the Principal Secretary in charge of roads. Most of you have interacted with Government ministries and are aware that the accounting officers of ministries are very busy people. Some of them, as I have said, are not professionals in the various sectors in which they work. We need to have somebody independent chairing this board because this is the board that will advise the Ministry in a number of areas. In conclusion, some of these Bills are very serious and we do not want to play politics on the Floor of the House because if we do so, we are likely to miss out on certain aspects of the Bills that are very important that will help this House enact relevant laws. I support the Bill."
}