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{
    "id": 1098022,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1098022/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 179,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank Sen. (Dr.) Milgo’s Committee for bringing this Bill to the Senate. This Bill will have far-reaching positive consequences on our youth. I will be fairly brief. I support the Bill in setting out clear definitions and provisions in the establishment and management of VTCs and in centralizing standardization. Without setting standards in education in the country, we would soon have private entrepreneurs setting up vocational training centres, collecting money from citizens and giving them very shoddy products. Madam Deputy Speaker, this standardization is also very important because we want an equitable growth of our economy by tapping in the available human resource and capacity in the country. I want to encourage in terms of what I found missing is that in creating these Vocational Training Centres (VTCs), this should not be a process of confining Kenyans to their counties. I want to see a provision where children from Kwale can be found in VTCs in Bungoma; children from Elgeyo-Marakwet are found in VTCs in Nairobi, Kiambu or Wajir so that we build a united country where our children grow up knowing that there are other Kenyans elsewhere as well. If we limit intakes to these VTCs from our local environment, then we will be killing the spirit of our nation. So, I would want Sen. (Dr.) Milgo to include a provision at the Committee Stage where you say in any of the institutions at least a percentage, say 10 or 15 percent should come from elsewhere so that we create a good mix. After all, we already have a Fund through the national Government like HELB to continue helping to pay fees for these children. If the Government is able to underwrite the fees requirement, then the counties and all those involved can help children move from one part of the country to the other. That also makes it easy for our young people who have trained in areas other than where they were born to pick jobs there and continue building a united and harmonized nation or Kenya. Madam Deputy Speaker, I also want to encourage that we need a very serious awareness programme in the counties. This is because there is that stigma that the best children in the villages are those who have gone to university yet we know that this kind of training sometimes gives them better opportunities in life than even going to university. Starting at VTCs going on to polytechnics, you can end up in the university or get a degree in whatever process you want to choose. We want to encourage curriculum management in schools, career masters in schools to teach our young people that, in fact, today, acquisition of technical skills is more important sometimes than having degree papers that have no bearing on technical skills."
}