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{
    "id": 1108628,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1108628/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 155,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 434,
        "legal_name": "James Nyikal",
        "slug": "james-nyikal"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. Teachers are the masters of the development of our children. Teachers spend more time with our children than parents do. Teachers are not only important to our children in terms of the knowledge they impart on them but also in terms of character development. When schools were closed for a long time during the earlier times of COVID-19, and the children were sent home to be with their parents, we all saw what happened. We now realise that teachers not only teach but they are also guardians of our children. I really applaud the teachers of this country. There are many reforms going on in the education sector but it appears like there is a problem of harmonisation. There is de-localisation of teachers, 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary school and implementation of the CBC. All these are actually happening at the same time but I do not get the impression that teachers are as fully involved as they should. This is going by what we have seen happening with teachers’ unions. It reached a point where teachers were actually being persuaded to leave some unions so that they could get promotions. We should protect teachers from such issues. There is a lot of unemployment in the teaching sector. We have many trained teachers who have not been employed. Ironically, many public schools do not have enough teachers. Many teachers in primary and secondary schools are on Board of Management (BoM) payrolls. Many teachers work in severe hardship areas and sometimes you do not know the criteria used in identifying hardship areas. You will see one constituency is a hardship area while the next one is not. We must treat the teachers equally. I applaud the teachers in my constituency of Seme. Let me just remember one teacher who is long dead, Mr. Awuor Otoko. When I was in Standard Four, my grandfather died and I stayed home for three weeks. I did not know why. When I went back to school, I could not cope with Mathematics. They had moved on and I was actually dropping out of school. This teacher came to our home and told my parents that he would stay with me at his place for one week without being paid anything, eating his food and tutoring me. When I went back to school, I was number one in Mathematics until I went to university. That is how important teachers are. I applaud the teachers of this country."
}