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{
    "id": 8657,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/8657/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 226,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Shitanda",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Housing",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 207,
        "legal_name": "Peter Soita Shitanda",
        "slug": "soita-shitanda"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me start by apologizing for coming in late. I had to rush to Mathioya to attend to some urgent Ministerial matter then got held up in a traffic jam. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I supplied written answers to this Question to the Clerk of the National Assembly sometime back. So, I do not understand why the hon. Member has not been given a copy. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to reply. (a) Kenya’s urban population stands slightly over 12 million as per the 2009 population and housing census. Of these urban residents, over 75 per cent of the households rent their dwellings. This means that only 25 per cent own their own dwellings. (b) Some of the programmes and projects undertaken include setting up of appropriate building technology centres throughout the country. At presently we have set up 61 centres in 61 constituencies. The ultimate goal is to establish one centre in each constituency. The centres promote use of cheaper building materials through production of stabilized soil blocks, using hydro form machines. Another initiative that we have undertaken involves the installation of physical and social infrastructure in 20 urban centres. This programme is aimed at providing infrastructure such as trunk sewer lines, water mains and murram roads to open up areas for private investors, who may wish to invest in housing. We also provide social infrastructure facilities such as schools and markets in urban centres. The third initiative is that we are undertaking some projects in slums in urban areas through a sustainable neighbourhood programme, where we are doing about 412 housing units for sale to low-income groups in Mavoko. We are also in the process of constructing 1,300 houses in Soweto East. This is a slum in Kibera where we will also provide other facilities like market stalls for the residents of Kibera. We will be doing a school, an ICT centre and a community library for the people of Kibera slum. The other initiative that we are trying to use to address this problem of lack of urban housing is that we have a maintenance and refurbishment department within my Ministry that is trying to refurbish all Government houses throughout our urban areas. We have at present refurbished about 10,000 housing units and on average we are refurbishing about 2,300 houses every year, just to put some of the houses in habitable conditions. Finally, my Ministry has been facilitating civil servants to own decent houses by providing mortgage loans at heavily subsidized interest rates. Recently, the Ministry completed more than 300 housing units on Jogoo Road. We are currently just about to hand over 600 housing units in Ngara and Kileleshwa that have been put up under this programme. The Ministry is also in the process of acquiring more land to construct houses in Kisumu, Mombasa, Nyeri and Kakamega."
}