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{
    "id": 777238,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/777238/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 199,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "that will save our people. According to the Constitution of 2010, it states that every Kenyan has a right to a decent living, a decent house, water and livelihood. In my brief contribution, I would like to touch on how slums are created. If you want to have a policy that upgrades slums, we must ask ourselves why we have the mushrooming of slums in the country. There are many causes to slum creation. This is due to lack of planning and immigration of people from rural areas to urban areas. I will talk about upgrading since the Senate Minority Leader is still here and I can see he is planning to leave. Yesterday, I supported one statement he made on the need to eliminate and not upgrade slums. However, the situation we are in now is not a pingpong where you can say you will eliminate, and it goes. It is going to be progressive. When you go to the causes, we need to avoid anything that can create slums in the future. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are two groups of people that we have in our towns that easily create these slums for us. There are street families and hawkers who do not belong to the city that they have moved to. For purposes of living, these people have to use Government land to create shelter for themselves which eventually become slums. I did not want to mention this because the Leader of Minority had mentioned in a statement yesterday about Eldoret Town and what is going on in our towns currently. This is not happening only in Uasin Gishu County. There is a move by our governors to relocate hawkers and at the same time to deal with the issue of street children. To some extent, I support this. The reason is because these children must be given decent homes and, therefore, cannot be allowed to live on the streets. We cannot allow them to stay and create the slums that we are trying to eliminate now or allow them to loiter in the streets. These are children born from Kenyans and we must take responsibility. We can either get the parents to take responsibility of their children or as a society we take the responsibility as a Government. I believe that the Government can develop homes for these children. If for some reason some parents have not been able to take care of their children, they should not be offloaded to the streets. But if they have been left in the streets, there is a Clause in our Constitution that says that if you find a child that is eight years and below that does not seem to know where they come from, they automatically become Kenyan citizens. The only way they can become Kenyan citizens is to create homes for them. What has been going on in Eldoret, Nyeri and currently in Nairobi counties is also going to take place in Mombasa County. This is something that can be done in a dignified manner so that our children can live in dignity. Therefore, while we talk of eliminating or upgrading slums, let us eliminate any action or behaviour within our society that will recreate the same slums that we are talking about. It is important to note that there are many religious organizations that would like to take care of street children. I would like to encourage our governors that as they do this very noble task of removing the symptoms of slum creation, they need to create public utility areas with facilities where the interested religious organisations can build homes and schools. We know that there are many generous Kenyans and organisations that are ready to take care of orphans, street children or any needy child. It will be a disaster for us to ignore a child 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."
}