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"id": 777018,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Minority Leader",
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"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": " Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to contribute to this Sessional Paper. In the Ninth Parliament we, more or less, passed an identical Paper. But by that time, it was not called slum upgrading; it was called the National Housing Policy Paper. It was brought by the then Minister for Roads and Housing, the Right Hon. Raila Amollo Odinga. I do not know whether the distinguished Senator was in Parliament then; were you his Permanent Secretary? I believe he had a contribution to that paper and I expected to hear more from him on this paper. Madam Temporary Speaker, in this day and age, it is scandalous for us to be bringing a paper to this House or any House of Parliament to talk about slum upgrading. A slum is a slum and has no other name. You cannot upgrade a slum; it is a slum, period! It is like talking about a ‘good’ thief. Countries world over are talking about slum elimination and doing away with slums. How do you upgrade a slum? It remains a slum; congested, with no facilities, no security and no water. Even when these facilities are there, they are controlled by criminal slum lords who sell goods and services to people at unaffordable prices. These slums have no roads, and if they are available, they are muddy and nobody can walk on them when it rains. Of course, you will remember the notorious ‘flying’ toilets in the slums like Mathare and Kibera. Madam Temporary Speaker, I agree with the distinguished Senator from Mandera that almost all our urban centres – over 60 to 70% of the urban dwellers – are in the informal settlements called slums, where they are living lives poorer than their compatriots in the villages. A herdsman in Mandera lives a much better life than some of our compatriots in the congested slums of our towns. What is even more worrying is not the talk of upgrading; it is the inability by our development structures, legal frameworks and policies to prevent the growth of new slums. Everywhere you turn or go, there are little mushrooming towns. Madam Temporary Speaker, if you drive down west, where you and I come from – start from Kangemi, limuru, uplands, Kinale, Soko Mjinga, Kinungi, down to Naivasha, Gilgil, Kikopey all the way to Burnt Forest – there is no planning. Anybody can just come and build anything. You will find that somebody has built a magnificent building, but next to it is something different; and vice versa. This slum phenomenon must be traced back to our land tenure system. Until and unless we have a proper change in our land tenure system that can give people security of the land they reside over, we will continue having these problems. There is a big town on the southern flanks of Nairobi, called Ongata Rongai; it is a total slum. You go on and you will find another town called Kiserian; another slum. When you move on to Isinya, it is another slum and yet we have examples to learn from. I would advise those who wrote this paper to visit a country that we keep quoting – a country that was poorer than us at our independence – called Malaysia. Today there is not The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}