Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 835670,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/835670/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 388,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nambale, ANC",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Sakwa Bunyasi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2511,
        "legal_name": "John Sakwa Bunyasi",
        "slug": "john-sakwa-bunyasi"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. First and foremost, on my behalf and the people of Nambale, I would like to pass our condolences to the families that have been bereaved. Secondly, I thank my colleague and fellow Member from Busia for bringing this Motion before the House. It gives us an opportunity to ventilate on this very serious issue. A lot has been said and there is no need for me to add the pain and sadness being expressed through the comments of my colleagues. However, I call upon the House to ensure that the House Committees that are responsible for the transport sector call sittings and hearings with key institutions like the Traffic Police Department, the NTSA and others like the Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development to converse this issue. We may discuss generally about the issues, but I would like a specific discussion of that trajectory of that night. How could the bus which was in Nairobi at around 1.00 a.m. be in Londiani at barely 4.00 a.m.? You are unlikely to be there even if you are driving your own car even if you drive slightly above the speed limit, given the conditions of the road and so on. I would like to get a specific inquiry into this, not just a general inquiry into broad things that we will just talk about and pack. Let us get to see how many of the over 20 or 30 roadblocks ever stopped that bus. How could that bus be with people sitting on the aisles? How could that over-crowded bus travel all the way from Nairobi to Londiani where it had the accident? Let us hear the specifics on what happened. We never know who was bribed, of course, we may not. But let us be told how come it happened with all the checks on the road. Let me then pray that we can make an amendment on the law from that. In Uganda, they had roadblocks all over the place. Museveni, when he was a guerilla leader, said it was very easy to pass by the roadblocks. In fact, it was safer to pass by the roadblocks than attempt to pass through the bush. They could shoot you in case they caught you there. He abolished them. When I hit Busia and I am going to Kampala, I will not find a roadblock on the road. Not at all, from Busia to Kampala, a distance of about 200 kilometres. How come we have not done anything despite our many roadblocks? Of course, we know what happens on the roads. Everybody just simply talks about it. Our police are rated about number one in the world from the bottom. You remember the President sort of casually saying “well, you are really not that bad”. He was praising them. That was good for motivation, but the truth may be that we are really first from the bottom, globally. This is something we have to think about and decide what incentives we can put in place. I support any measures including banning of night travel and any other that will go towards alleviating the problem. Let us ban night travel, put an age limit on drivers across the board while we sort out the other issues. Let us decide on the price to be paid when there are impunities like the one that has happened in this case. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}