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{
    "id": 958566,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/958566/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 227,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wamatangi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 646,
        "legal_name": "Paul Kimani Wamatangi",
        "slug": "paul-kimani-wamatangi"
    },
    "content": "inspection of projects that have been carried out by the Government in the last seven years since our election in the year 2013. I do not want to forget to laud the Government because to a large extent, since the days of His Excellency Mwai Kibaki, the former President, this country has experienced real growth and expansion of a lot of infrastructural projects, without having to name them. Largely, if we look at our highways and roads, airports, ports and other projects that fact is acknowledged. Madam Temporary Speaker, by international standards, almost every infrastructural project of the magnitude, for example, of the bypasses, expansion of the roads that we are doing is awarded with a condition. There should be preservation from erosion and conservation of the topography of the soil. Where excavation has occurred, the condition in award of such contracts is that there has to be restoration of forests and growth. That is why I support this Motion. We need to look casually or inspect any project that has been carried out. It would be good to start, for example, with the project of the Southern Bypass from Mombasa Road all the way to Kikuyu. It passes through a forest, but the question one would like to ask is, when they cut through that forest and removed so many trees, how many were planted back? The answer is probably none. If you look at a project like the Eastern Bypass, it is the same story. What has been happening in our case is that, that is taken so casually that a mere planting of some grass in patches--- Madam Temporary Speaker, I want to report that my Committee recently undertook a visit to inspect the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in your county, specifically in Kajiado. One of the conditions is that because we have built huge embankments and retainer walls, how will you restore the soil and guard it from erosion? What has been happening is that, other than planting trees, grass and other foliage, they build concrete along those walls and channel them to drain water downwards. What this does, in effect, is that all environmental advantages or benefits that were being accrued by that community before are lost. Madam Temporary Speaker, the irony of it is that sometimes it looks to us that once you cut down trees – for example during that construction – the loss is only because those trees have been lost. However, the cumulative ripple-down effect of that deforestation is so huge, such that you can argue that those immediate communities will suffer from many other maladies. This is because, in an area where you build a road that expands – probably the way we want to expand the Mombasa Express Way all the way to Mau Summit – you are covering a whole corridor probably of more than 60 to 70 feet; sometimes even up to 100 feet and which runs up to 200 kilometers. We should be asking ourselves how much rainfall we are going to lose in that entire stretch. Once you lose the rainfall, what else do we lose? We lose good health."
}