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{
    "id": 1098024,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1098024/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 181,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Madam Deputy Speaker, about two, three years ago, I was having a chat with President Thabo Mbeki, the retired president of South Africa and he told me that South Africa is importing welders, fitters and all those medium level workers for their industries from Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia because they do not have them. When we train our young people well from vocational training to technical institutes to higher polytechnics and they get good skills, never mind that there may not be immediately available jobs in Kenya, we can export labour to countries that needs them. For a long time, Poland was the number one supplier of plumbers in the whole of Europe because they had set up technical institutes that were training their plumbers. If you went to anywhere in the United Kingdom the plumber was Polish. If you went to Germany, the plumber was Polish. They made their economy to turn around and now Poland is a major player in the European economy just because of this. I want to encourage that we train as many of our young people in technical skills as we can. If you go to developed economies like Germany and Japan, for every engineer you have in a production line, he has more than 250 technicians behind him. For every senior engineer you have, you have 300 technicians behind him. They are the ones who make the cars we drive. They are the ones who assemble the fridges we use in our houses. They are the ones who make the phones we use. It is not everybody with that high-end degree that makes the economy turn around. In fact, it is these middle-level technicians that you will find running our dairy plants, coffee mills, tea factories, plumbing works and every single bit of the economy. We have the top end professionals to give them guidance, to design and tell them how to execute. Execution is left to them. They are the ones who will make our economy change. For this country to move from what we have been singing on end that we want to be like Malaysia that was at the same level like us at Independence, Singapore, Indonesia, India, it is because they embraced technical training. It is because they knew that you can have 100 engineers in one country but if you have one million technicians they will make a hell of a difference in the management of the economy. This is very important because if we want even the counties to compete, because the philosophy of devolution and Sen. Murkomen was involved in this, is never to endlessly send money from the centre to the counties. The philosophy of devolution is that counties will grow to the extent where they will be donating money to the centre. That is how we want this country to grow. When you go to a country like Australia, an economy like western Australia subsidizes the national government because it is the mining capital of the world. If you go to a country like the USA, California does not need any money from Washington. New York does not need any money from Washington. They make enough money to subsidize poorer States within the federation. The same applies to Germany. We want to see that in another five, ten years, Nairobi should not be looking forward to receiving any money from the National Treasury. It should generate enough money to support Wajir, Elgeyo-Marakwet and others that are less endowed with resources to grow their economies."
}