Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 777294,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/777294/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 255,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "This country has a very good legislative framework but we are missing enforcement. We have the Physical Planning Act that should essentially be dealing with approvals of all developments that are coming up in various cities. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, there are good development projects that are supposed to take care of the middle class. However, our county governments have this chronic problem of not checking on planned developments in their cities and they turn out to become slums. For example, Buru Buru Estate was well designed; it was meant to cater for the middle class. It was built with beautiful houses with infrastructure like roads and water. But if you drive through Buru Buru Estate, of late, because of failure to enforce the provisions of the Physical Planning Act, it is fast turning out to be another slum. This is because people have been allowed to construct and even encroach on pavements and feeder roaders within the estate. Therefore, we need to drum this into the heads of our county governments that they contribute a lot to these unplanned developments by failing to enforce the Physical Planning Act. So, the challenge is to ensure that we respect the laws that are supposed to bring order in various estates within our cities. Thirdly, we must acknowledge that slums are caused by people who do not have good earning capacity. When we passed the Constitution of Kenya 2010, we created the Salaries and Remuneration Commission. The expectation of Kenyans was that we were going to have an equitable sharing of our national cake so that we do not have people who earn so much and at the lower level, there are those who earn so little that they cannot afford basic housing. For example, how are we going to convince people that they cannot live in slums when their minimum basic salary is Kshs13,000? It is obvious that for these people to survive, pay rent, have food on the table and buy clothing for their children, they must live in the slums. With higher salaries, it supports the rent that they are expected to pay in urban areas. Therefore, I would like to state that this country must also, in a proactive manner, look for ways of increasing the earning capacity of people who are at the lower cadre. One way of doing this is to increase the tax rebates so that we begin taxing people at a higher level than what we are doing currently. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we have to appreciate as a country that the Constitution we passed in 2010 expected that Kenyans would lead better quality lifestyles than what we have had before. Article 40 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 states that every Kenyan is entitled to a clean environment. However, how many county governments have put in place measures for garbage collection? In the 1980’s, we used to have lorries that were collecting garbage in various urban centres; these were vehicles that we used to call Kamero. They used to go round the estates collecting garbage. Those vehicles are not there anymore. If you travel to other jurisdictions, this is something that every government is conscious about. When you do not have a good garbage collection system, it is one way of allowing undesirable developments to come up which may acquire that title of a slum. Again, it boils down to the blame game between our national Government and the county governments. 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."
}