Senate Passes Motion To Make Nakuru Town, A City

Senate has passed a motion conferring Nakuru town City status.

On Thursday Senator Moses Kajwang moved a motion on the adoption of the report of the standing committee on Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations on the conferment of City status to Nakuru Municipality.

The committee made the following recommendations for Nakuru Town to be a city according to Senator Kajwang'.

"1. When Nakuru Municipality becomes a city, the cost of living should not rise dramatically and that any proposed increase in taxation should be subjected to further public participation and ownership and this should include adequate sensitization of general on the cost benefits.

2. That in order to cure the urban sprawl, a review of the boundaries of Nakuru Municipality as stipulated in the Urban Areas and Cities Act which provides the procedure for delineation of boundaries should be done.

3. We recommended that in dealing with encroachment of land, the law and good practices ought be enforced and observed in dealing with businesses that have encroached on public land and this will help open up public spaces including drainages.

4. The committee recommends that the municipal board should implement Section 22 of the Urban Areas and Cities Act by forming institutionalized citizen fora and the committee also recommends that the municipality should constitute and equip a modern planning and development control unit in line with Urban Areas and Cities Act 2011 for sustainable development of the municipality."

Senator James Orengo supported the motion noting that for any town in Kenya to be upstaged to a city it must meet certain criteria chief among them being a place where any Kenyan can live.

"Other than this statutory requirement, I think any town in Kenya that deserves being a city must be a place where any Kenyan can live. More than anything else, we should have cities that are accessible to all communities in Kenya," the Siaya Senator said.

"And I think Nakuru over the years, in my experience, has been such a place in the country. Therefore I have every reason to support this motion and say that other urban areas which deserve to be cities should have the experience that Nakuru has over the years," he added.