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    "id": 813599,
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    "content": "counties to be guided in form of a policy or regulation that can help us maintain and come up with roads that are more durable. It has been done before and it can also be done in this country. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the budgets for roads, as we have seen time and again, are very high. For the counties, we have about Kshs40 million to Kshs70 million being allocated to a kilometre of road. That is dependent on whether it is facilitating drainage or otherwise. In the counties’ budgets alone, less that Kshs1 billion is allocated to road developments. Bituminous roads are practically not affordable for most of our counties. This is why we are looking for other alternatives. The technique of stabilising soils is not new; it has been done since time immemorial. This technique is as ancient as during the Mesopotamian time when they realised that you can take soil and stabilise it by just adding a chemical to it, for example, limestone or even calcium. With time, these technologies have developed because of traffic. In the Roman times, they would put stones. But even with stabilised soils, after putting a good soil base, it is possible just to stabilise it a little further to allow for traffic. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, countries like Malaysia and India have utilised stabilized soil roads to open up their rural areas. There is no denial that once you open up the rural areas, then a country will flourish in terms of economics. A country like India, specifically, is adopting this as a measure for green technology. They are going into stabilised soils to enhance their environment. In this country, we are very big on environment friendly approaches towards construction. This should be the approach that we should take when it comes to roads. These initiatives are easy to borrow from. Incidentally, there are some counties that are already using it, and I wish the Members of the National Assembly were here. For example, in Embu and Kiambu they have utilised these technologies. We have learnt that we do not even need a foreign contractor to help us build these stabilised soil roads. Once we have the technology, we can do this on our own. It does not even require counties to invest in equipment because we already have it. After all, all we always do is sending our graders and compactors to the roads every time it rains, because we have never found a mechanism that can give us a road that, once built, can give us 10 to 15 years, yet these technologies exist. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, debate on the Roads Bill is now on the Floor of the House. My Motion had come probably slightly earlier but in the new Bill, there is a provision for a Board that will help set standards for counties. I do not want to go into what the Bill has because we had given our input at Committee level and we are still awaiting input from everyone else on the Floor. However, once a regulation like this one has been set, my opinion is that you do not need a Board to again come and continue giving us more. It is because once it is set, it will now be up to counties to ensure that they utilise it since it does not require three or four formulas. I wish this House adopts this Motion ahead of the Bill so that we can have this Regulation going out to counties. It is already being done in some counties. So, why can all the other counties not adopt it? It will be useful in saving counties a lot of money for maintenance and also the back and forth that we see whenever we have floods as we saw 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."
}