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{
"id": 1172188,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1172188/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dagoretti South, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon. John Kiarie",
"speaker": {
"id": 13322,
"legal_name": "John Kiarie Waweru",
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"content": "cannot be put to a vote. So, this is not a matter of putting it to a vote as either yes or no; this is actually a constitutional matter. Hon. Speaker, to my mind, the Bill before us is actually the Private Universities Bill, or even worse, the Death of the Public Universities Bill. For this, I do not see the hurry as to why we should be prosecuting it in the 11th hour of this 12th Parliament, especially with the raft of amendments or the plethora of amendments that need to be put to this Bill. In fact, when amendments get to this threshold, it even warrants for an actual re-publication of the Bill. That is because when we are amending each and every article of this Bill, it means we are even better off just doing a new Bill. Hon. Speaker, when I look at this Bill – and I have been party to the debate that has gone on including my contributions in the Second Reading – as it is being presented this afternoon, this is actually the Departmental Committee on Education and Research conducting a postmortem on our public universities after successfully killing and annihilating them. Hon. Speaker, I am requesting that with your discretion, because you have institutional memory and wisdom, to actually pull down this Bill on a number of issues. One, so that you have the time to attend to the constitutional issues that are being raised here. But secondly, because what is being said by the Leader of Majority is actually provocative. That is because what he is reporting here is not what actually happened. I had a raft of amendments that I had proposed. I was judicious and diligent enough to appear before the Committee for the harmonisation. But to my shock and awe, when I got there, out of all my amendments, I was only asked to prosecute one amendment that was actually not contentious, about the tenure of a Chief Executive Officer at Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service. All the other amendments never made it for the harmonisation. I only prosecuted one amendment before the Committee out of the many amendments that I had. Hon. Speaker, it would be wrong for us to legislate in anger. There is no hurry. If we could leave this to the 13th Parliament, they would even have time to prosecute it better. That way, we will be able to look for a remedy for the right ailment, rather than provide a remedy to the wrong ailment while the real mischief that is ailing public education remains unattended to. So, when we have students being enrolled in private universities against their own will, that in itself, should be an issue of alarm. But to correct the Leader of the Majority Party, that is not the only issue on this Bill. Constitutionally, this Bill is actually interfering with the right to education. These are Articles 43 and 53 of our Constitution. We know what has been happening to us, as Members of Parliament. Every week, we are attending harambees for students who are in private universities who never chose to be there. You know what happens is that, for example, if you are taking a professional course like law, you can get that for Kshs40,000 in a public university. However, if you take it in a private university, that price could even triple. The cost of education could triple, thus disenfranchising very many learners. I want to say that this is not the kind of Bill that we should be passing at such a late hour in the life of this Parliament. But, most importantly, which I think is an issue you should consider when you are making your decision, is that I believe this is one of the Bills that is a candidate for interrogation as to how it ended on the Floor of this House. Before that, it would also be important, maybe, even for the DCI or the EACC to step in and find out how this Bill ended up in the Cabinet. This is because there is no way a Government can be the one cannibalising its own institutions and trying to put that into legislation, and trying to pass it through this Parliament and in that way, spelling a death knell to our public universities. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}