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{
    "id": 835673,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/835673/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 391,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kinangop, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Zachary Thuku",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13380,
        "legal_name": "Zachary Kwenya Thuku",
        "slug": "zachary-kwenya-thuku"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for this opportunity to contribute to this Motion. From the outset, I want to thank the Member for Busia County, Hon. Florence Mutua for bringing this up. It is really sad that we are losing lives in this magnitude. The statistics are worrying. This Motion is timely although I wish we did not have a Motion emanating from such an accident. My contributions on this Motion are three pronged, namely, the issue of carelessness, rogue traffic police and safety. I want to start with the issue of carelessness. Eighty per cent of the accidents that happen are out of carelessness. Most of our drivers are never keen on the road. They are not mindful of the many lives that they carry in those vehicles particularly those in public transport. I have had my issues while I am driving on the road and I have seen buses being driven carelessly and overtaking in areas they are not supposed to be overtaking. I have taken it upon myself sometimes to even report the same to police officers manning those routes and that habit does not seem to be dying anytime soon. In fact, drivers work in cahoots with traffic policemen. I have had several instances where I had to stop my vehicle to reprimand traffic police for soliciting or receiving bribes from the drivers. So, the issue of losing lives in this magnitude is due to carelessness and collusion between the drivers and the people that we entrust to check on the safety, standards and whether the vehicles are well driven. If we are going to win this war against rogue drivers and unroadworthy vehicles, then we have to rethink the people that we have entrusted with our roads to man and make sure that our standards are adhered to. The other issue is the one on safety. Safety is multifaceted as far as our roads are concerned. There is the issue of the vehicles, as my colleagues have ably mentioned. The vehicles that are ferrying our people are not supposed to be ferrying our people in the first place. The materials they are made of do not have security features. In case of an accident, the number of casualties is always high. Some die because of side impact while others die because of roof impact. These are premature deaths emanating from accidents. Looking at the buses that are used in the developed countries such as the USA and Portugal where I was recently, you cannot find a bus whose structural body is done by metal. We need to think of fiber glass so that in case of an accident, we do not have so many casualties. The other issue is, and this is the point I want to finish with, the Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and urban Development has to really to go back to the basics. Hon. Michuki set the standards, but today nobody is interested with the ‘Michuki Rules’. Our vehicles are oversped and it seems like that is the order of the day. Recently, I asked one police officer why a vehicle was driving at 100 kilometres per hour and he told me that there is no rule that stops them from doing that. That saddened me because it was a 51-seater bus. What if there is an 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."
}