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{
    "id": 884786,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/884786/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 169,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Pokot South, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David Pkosing",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2662,
        "legal_name": "Losiakou David Pkosing",
        "slug": "losiakou-david-pkosing"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me this opportunity to second my Leader of the Majority Party. Before I delve into this Bill, I would want to say in moving that as I walk on the corridors Members have been asking me about their next tranche for repairing roads, our normal Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) money. Therefore, I would like to announce that it is on the way to your constituencies, Members. By 21st you will get it in your local offices, that is the regional office. So, that is being done. KeRRA is very efficient. That is timely Members because you will also be going for recess and you will have a lot of time to proceed. I want to thank my Committee for looking at these amendments very critically. Most of these amendments from the Senate are unconstitutional as the Leader of the Majority Party said. My responsibility, therefore, is to go to the details so that Members can appreciate. Let me start what the Leader of the Majority Party said. They attempted, unconstitutionally, to amend the Third Schedule of the Bill. So, what did they say? They said that the constituency roads committee shall comprise of the following: (a) Two members from respective NG-CDF committee. (b) Two officers serving in the office of the county Senator. (c) CEC member for roads, and (d) Representative from Kenya National Roads Authority. That is already unconstitutional. It goes against Articles 95 and 96 of the Constitution, the sovereignty of the Houses. There is the Senate under Article 96 and the National Assembly under Article 95. So, what is being attempted through this backdoor is to amend those two Articles of the Constitution, which is illegal, by trying to merge the two Houses. Where will the Senate be and where will the National Assembly be? That was the mischievous part of it. That is unconstitutional. Two, the Senate suggested the membership of the committee that is in Clause 17(3). The constituency roads committee shall designate two of the members appointed under Section 2A, that is from the NG-CDF office, to be the Chair and from the office of the Senator to be the vice- chair. That is unconstitutional. They even went on to suggest that two officers from the office of the Senator be part of procurement. My Committee found this very unconstitutional and a way of trying to amend the Constitution from the back door by merging the Houses. What is the reason for the Senate? This is a dangerous trend if we were to adopt it, because then they will ask to be members of NG-CDF. They will even ask to be members of my Committee. It is trying to fuse both Houses through the back door. So, my Committee rejected that. They also attempted to amend Clause 2. They reduced the definition of public roads and we rejected that. They left out thoroughfares and other uses of roads. We rejected that. Clause 4 which is on guiding principles, we agreed with them, as the Leader of the Majority Party said, because they brought in the county authorities. Remember in this Bill, the National Assembly was so fair to even create agencies at the county level. This is where they should have introduced an amendment to oversee the agencies. We would have helped them. That was going to be very effective, but they refused and they left it out. So, on that we agreed. On Clause 9, we disagreed with them in terms of composition of the board. We had agreed as a House that we do not need to concentrate boards with a lot of these bodies like Law Society Kenya (LSK). They brought back LSK and my Committee rejected that. It should not be the way forward, because LSK will be everywhere. Why do you bring LSK to a roads board? This is about engineers. With due respect to lawyers here, where is law here? The wisdom of the House was that we should not go that direction. We rejected. 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."
}