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{
    "id": 1224099,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1224099/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 248,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, but protect me from the Deputy Minority Leader. I love a good debate and I have been a debater all my life. I am part of those who requested that if possible--- Mr. Speaker, Sir, I agree with your wisdom and guidance, that in the interest of time, we allow all colleagues to speak. This is an important matter that all of us should contribute to the maximum. However, I stand guided and I will try to compress my thoughts in 10 minutes. First of all, I commend the Committee on Education. If my memory serves me right, this is the first Committee of this Senate to file a report before the Second Reading of a Bill that has been brought to this House. There will be a moment when we will have a debate about this. Earlier on, we had a debate in the Senate Business Committee (SBC) on the accurate time to file a committee report. Is it during, after or before the Second Reading? There will be a time to have that conversation. Mr. Speaker, Sir, given that many Members rely on reports of committees to inform their thoughts during debates, I celebrate the good work of the Committee led by my good friend, Sen. Joe Nyutu of Murang’a, for being industrious and ensuring they receive submissions as listed, from about 32 entities that were interested in enriching this Bill. About four, five or six years ago when we did Division of Revenue Bill, part of the conditional grants that had been granted to various counties was a Kshs2 billion grant that was divided equally amongst the various counties. I was a Member of the Committee on Budget and Finance then. It appeared to us that somebody saw a spare Kshs2 billion in the books of accounts of Government and said we may as well just throw it to the village polytechnics and let each and every county do as they wish. That was the beginning of trouble because in the subsequent financial years, different counties chose to do different things. I think each county was getting close to Kshs 200 million or something close to that. I cannot fully recall the exact figures. However, in the subsequent financial year, you could see the trouble of allocating money without first thinking through what exactly it was meant to achieve. That is part of what this Bill seeks to cure. Mr. Speaker, Sir, this is long overdue. If you look the audit reports - it must be Financial Year 2018/ 2019 - you will see that different county governments decided to do various things with this money. Some painted, others set up a rabbit urine fetching projects for their county members and said that was a vocational duty as well. They did other different things, as ridiculous as you may want to imagine. It is upon that foundation that the exercise of reforming what you would refer then as village polytechnics was set. However, this Bill now wants to give it the proper nomenclature. One of the things that I celebrate about this Bill is by having a better"
}