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{
    "id": 822663,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/822663/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 214,
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    "content": "In the offences section, we should make it an offence for Kenya Power or the Rural Electrification Authority to have faulty transformers, like the ones currently in contention. In Kaiti Constituency alone, there are 100 faulty transformers. Why should Kenyans suffer because of defective transformers? Sen. Cheruiyot mentioned this in passing. The consumer protection around provision of these services should make it an offence for the Kenya Power or the Rural Electrification Authority to do substandard work. We should punish them because they are using taxpayers’ money. When it comes to the penalty clauses at the end of the Bill, the offences are only against consumers who connect illegal electricity, like what they do in Kibera. We call it ‘spaghetti’ connection. However, they do not make it an offence for substandard work. I will be moving those amendments at the Committee Stage. Madam Temporary, there is the question of Environment Impact Assessment (EIA). The Senate Majority Leader might not be aware that Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) power lines come with a caveat that you cannot have a household within 60 metres of the power lines because of the radiation. However, this information is never given to the public because we have not made it mandatory that before some of these high-level power projects are done, the environmental issue that Sen. (Dr.) Zani mentioned is made mandatory. In the case of entering, there is a clause that they can enter upon complying with certain laws. The clause should be specific. Under compulsory acquisition law, you cannot erect a pylon, like the ones that KETRACO are doing, before you compensate. In Makueni, the Sultan Hamud-Mwingi power line is stuck because they put pylons in people’s land and promised to pay them, but they have not. The public has turned against them and said that KETRACO will not string power unless they pay the people whose land they have acquired. I will be moving an amendment to make it mandatory for some of these clauses to be very explicit, like they are in the Compulsory Acquisition Act. Sen. Murkomen, Sen. Cheruiyot and Sen. (Eng.) Maina have mentioned about compensation. The people in Isinya have made it impossible to string KETRACO lines because they have increased tremendously the cost and valuation of land. The fundamental question that has not been addressed is: Who is in charge of valuation? What happened to the Valuation Act that would tell you, for example, when you are in Isinya, the value of land is X and the value of land along the highway in Makueni is Y? The reason land speculators and land mafia have taken over the National Land Commission, with the collaboration of the National Land Commission officials, is because they have taken this component and inflated it. You cannot tell Kenyans that they have inflated the cost of land. If it is not them, it is the National Land Commission (NLC) officials who inflated land price and made it impossible for the Government to have these contracts. So, how do we regulate it? We must make it mandatory for Government to have this law on land valuation. That makes it easier for it to acquire land because when that happens, people will not inflate the price. As I have said before, these land speculators are doing this in connivance, cahoots and in collaboration with officials of the Ministry of Land and the 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."
}