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{
    "id": 830561,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/830561/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 621,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Pareno",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13180,
        "legal_name": "Judith Ramaita Pareno",
        "slug": "judith-ramaita-pareno"
    },
    "content": "making it easy for people to access. This Bill emphasizes on the issue of access to buildings by vehicles and human beings. I think sometimes we have lost lives and have severally been told that where one has a fire sometimes it is impossible to save lives because of poor access to buildings. So, if we could only have provided that accessibility right from the beginning, we would have been able to save many lives. Many times, rescue missions have been hindered by lack of accessibility. Sometime back, we also noted that during the very heavy floods we witnessed recently in this country, there was a building that had been put up around the Langat- Mbagathi round about. This building has since been brought down. There were heavy floods around where it had been put up making the area inaccessible. We should not do things this way and as a result of lack of plans, we ignore issues of the environment until they catch up with us or until we experience flooding and then we have to bring down buildings like we have done. I am happy that this Bill has provided for environment, accessibility issues and has even gone ahead to provide for creation of accessibility for PWDs. Many times we forget about their rights to access buildings, access areas of business and their right to move freely. Sometimes they are unable to move even if someone has a wheelchair and the only thing available is a road and there is no pavement or sidewalk for that person. It then becomes a problem because we did not provide them access. I am happy that this is coming for the counties. Lately, we have seen in this city specifically, that issues being addressed by this Bill have started being implemented not because of this Bill but because the problems we have in Nairobi are a lot more because of inaccessibility, poor planning or even planning but no implementation. This Bill addresses issues of design, maintenance and the drainage systems. We know the many problems we have had with our drainage systems. We saw what happened at the former Nakumatt Ukay the other day. Somebody simply decided to put up a building in some water way and we saw what happened. The whole supermarket was submerged; it was all over the internet that supermarkets in Kenya are being submerged because people had built on riparian land. At the end of the day, it is because we either did not have a proper drainage system or we are ignorant and decided to mess our environment and the environment ended up messing us more than we did with it. I support this Bill. I thought that the Mover can check whether this Bill has any relations with the already existing laws on planning, building codes and how much of it is either conflicting or in tandem with what is already provided for, and how much it relates with the by-laws that we have within the counties. We all know that we have many by- laws at the counties and the county assemblies have been able to put in money to run the counties. It will be good to try to harmonise them so that we do not have this particular Bill being contrary to what is already existing in our by-laws in the counties or in any law on planning. This is because this Bill is talking about parking bays and, as you know, counties collect a lot of revenue from parking fees, including from private individual parking spaces. However, do we have a law regulating that aspect within the counties? If we do, how then can we harmonise this law with those provisions on how our parking The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}