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{
    "id": 777026,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/777026/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 309,
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    "content": "accidents and I can assure you of that. We can even take a Bible and swear. Those fires are acts of arson committed by landlords who do not even own the land. In the old days, I used to act for some crude landlord and I stopped out of morality. If you were a tenant of the fellow and you defaulted in paying rent, he could not take you to the Rent Tribunal for adjudication. What the fellow would do is to wait for you to go to work. By the time you came back in the evening, you would find your house with no doors and windows. He would put sacks of sand in the toilet shanks and you would have no choice but to leave. One day I took courage and reported him to the police. I told them that I act for a client who is a criminal and I want him dealt with. Madam Temporary Speaker, the fires that we have witnessed in Kibera, and recently at a place called Kijiji are acts of arson. The fellows who own those slum houses want to increase rent. They are very clever in their calculations. They argue that if they burn those houses, the tenants will leave; then they will build better structures and double or triple the rent. If you go to those places now, you will find construction is going on. Whenever such fire incidences occur, the “big” people run there carrying blankets and packets of unga yet people cannot live on the blankets or packets of unga . We must have a blue print on how to deal with informal settlements. I come from a county called Bungoma. Bungoma Town is 80 per cent a slum. It is not for any mistake of my people for places like Mandizini and Mashambani where people pile on each other. I have asked my new governor to consciously find a way – even if people were to live in poor neighborhoods, at least pave their roads, give them water and street lighting. I do not know who amongst us is in the Committee on Finance and Budget and was in Mombasa for a meeting with the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA). This kind of mental block has to change. You cannot believe that CRA thinks that there are no marginalized places or poor people in Nairobi because if you go to Kibera, people have no power, but there is power in Lavington which is not too far. How can they be so naïve in analyzing situations? The question is: Can they afford to access power or not? The issue is not on how far the power is. The power pole can be outside my shanti, but I can never afford it. Madam Temporary Speaker, I have said it here before and would like to repeat; that in my opinion, Nairobi County hosts the largest number of poor Kenyans in this country more than any other county. Right from the extreme end of Eastlands where people live on the brink of the sewer plant in Dandora all the way to Mutu-ini in Kikuyu where the poorest of the poor are. A survey carried out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) two years ago showed that 70 per cent of the residents in Nairobi County can barely afford a meal a day. The other day I was embarrassed to see Members of Parliament (MPs) complaining that the food they eat is not good yet there are people who do not eat at all. There are people who would eat anything. The MPs should be talking about how to eliminate abject poverty among the people they represent. Not to tell us that we are given chicken that does not taste like chicken, soup that does not look like soup and so on and so forth. We need a Marshall Plan. The Senate has a mandate to protect counties and their 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"
}