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{
    "id": 1031904,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1031904/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 196,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Were",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13183,
        "legal_name": "Petronila Were Lokorio",
        "slug": "petronila-were-lokorio"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also want to join my colleagues in making comments on the presidential speech to the joint sitting of Parliament. Madam Deputy Speaker, I also want to start by making a comment on the issues the President talked about at length on COVID-19. My focus is on the way we are treating our frontline health workers. They prefer to be called martyrs because we are sacrificing them in this fight against COVID-19. I wished the President would have told us more on the way they are improving the working environment of doctors and nurses. If the President would have given a way forward on the provision of the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to our healthcare workers. That said, he also said that they are committed to the course. He mentioned about the opening of schools to come with the reality of COVID-19. That is commendable because it was becoming a pandemic in itself on what is going to happening in the education sector. The President also talked about the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) and praised its implementation. However, I wish that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology would focus on the implementation of CBC in our public schools in the counties. Most of the provisions that are required for implementation of CBC are not easy to come by in schools in the rural area. We might be looking at a CBC that works, but only works for certain children in this country and not others. The President also talked about the issue of pending bills in the progress report of our national values. I was happy because he gave orders that pending bills in all sectors be prioritized. The Treasury is prioritising payment of these pending bills and we commend him for that. He also talked about mental health. With COVID-19, the issue of mental health is now a big deal. Since most of us have misunderstood mental health for a long time to mean madness, we really do not know how to deal with these issues and instead may choose to focus on myths. The issues of mental health need to move to the second level of public education so that we deal with the symptoms of mental health and the treatment thereof. Many of our psychologists and psychiatrists do not have a lot of work because people with mental health issues do not visit them. Public education in this area would be helpful. The taskforce set up by the President has a lot of work to do. The President talked about making Kenya a manufacturing country and the BBI report has something called the cottage industries. With the devolved systems, this manufacturing endeavour will work and create more jobs. We can only create jobs when we become a manufacturing country. We look forward to implementation of this Report that the President gave of his plans for this country for the remaining two years."
}