Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1098085,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1098085/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 242,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Nyamunga",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 738,
        "legal_name": "Rose Nyamunga Ogendo",
        "slug": "rose-nyamunga-ogendo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. This is one Bill that I have been waiting for, for a very long time. The reason why I have been looking forward to having this Bill is because we have done a lot of disservice to our country. For a long time, we have believed as a people or a nation that somebody must get a degree for them to be known to have gone to school or to be educated. We have spent a lot of money as Kenyans moreso in the 1980s, 1990s and I think up to now believing that we must educate our children outside this country because we did not believe in ourselves. That has led to a lot of money drain from this country going out to other countries and supporting other economies instead of supporting our own colleges and system by educating our children in this country. Not every child is brilliant. The fact that one child may understand something better or quicker than the other does not make that child better. However, in our minds, we believe that there are children who are more brilliant than others because others are capable of understanding quickly and those who are slow, we have taken them to be maybe stupid, if I may use that word. However, I do not think our children are stupid. It is just the level at which our children understand issues. As a result of that, we have laid a lot of emphasis on white collar jobs and education. Even if a child goes to the university to learn something that will not be of so much value to them or beneficial to this country but we still insist that our children must go to university and must have white collar jobs even when they come back and do nothing. We have done a lot of disservice to this country by not believing in ourselves. Imagine if in each county we had a vocational training centre and a polytechnic in each and every county, properly established with proper standards that cuts across as most of us have already mentioned that the colleges must be established in a uniform way. The standards must be the same such that anybody qualified in Kisumu should have the same standards with any other person qualified in any other part of this country so that we do not think that if you come from Kisumu, you are more qualified than somebody coming from Turkana. If we have the same standards and apply them across the board, it will mean that we will believe in our TVET colleges because they are very critical. I do not think we should be talking about industrialization. We want to talk about food security and housing yet we do not develop our own people to help us develop the three or four categories. Right now, the Government has four agendas - I have already mentioned three of them - without qualifying our children. I have in my own village, Ahero Village Polytechnic. There are so many students who will never step in Ahero even if they have a D. Having a D does not mean that they cannot improve from a certificate to a higher diploma and continue to whatever level that they would want to reach. If Ahero or Mboya technical or TVET is properly established with qualified staff and good standards, I believe that a lot of money that our parents are spending taking our children away from home--- boarding fees is very high and not affordable to many parents. The moment we have these TVETs and VTCs in our villages or our counties, it will cut costs meaning that more people will be qualified."
}