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{
    "id": 1229946,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1229946/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 179,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dagoretti South, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Kiarie",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "he is in the country, I have to thank him because he gave me some pants so that I could appear on television. The first time in my life that I appeared on television, I was in borrowed pants. The point I am making is that uniforms can actually be a tool for exaggerating the class divide amongst our students. You can imagine what I felt as a nine-year-old when I was told that I could not be admitted into the studio in the pants that I was wearing, knowing that it was not my fault, but that my parents could not afford a new pair of shorts. You can imagine the embarrassment of having to go to a friend’s house to change before I got into the vehicle that would take us to the then Voice of Kenya (VoK) studios, now the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) studios. The standardisation and production of uniforms is a timely debate. If we could get to a level where the Ministry of Education rationalises school uniforms, every one of the 290 constituencies in Kenya can put up a factory which will be constituency-run. It would be parents who are taking students to school who would run the factory. There are organisations like churches and non-governmental institutions which we only use one day in a week. We spend millions of shillings building monumental brick and mortar structures that are not used from Monday to Friday. What if we standardised our uniforms and the churches that are empty from Monday to Friday could accommodate parents who are trained to stitch uniforms and garments and are trained in the science of fashion and fabric design to stitch our school uniforms, so that we can bring down the cost of school uniforms in our constituencies? Even more importantly, if an entire constituency was to make its own uniforms, you can imagine the savings we would make on the economies of scale. If we set up a factory in Riruta in Dagoretti South Constituency, it will be assured of a market of all the students in Early Childhood Development (ECD), primary schools, junior secondary schools, high schools and even tertiary institutions in the constituency. That would be a thriving industry for our school uniform makers. More importantly, it would lead to a search for new knowledge. Our universities would start on research to find out the kind of fabrics that work well for different regions and the type of fabrics that are good for making school uniforms. Hon. Temporary Speaker, I am trying to say that after the standardisation and production of uniforms, the next thing that Hon. Gathoni Wamuchomba needs to think about is the localisation of the making of school uniforms. I would like to end it here by saying that the Motion that has been brought by Hon. Gathoni Wamuchomba is of such national importance that she cannot leave it at this point. Hon. Gathoni Wamuchomba should think about how she is going to craft this into a Bill and present to the House promptly. I want to tell her not mind the critics that are coming from here and there as they are builds that you can put on your Motion that will come up as a Bill. We can make it an Act and institute a law on standardising and putting good production and localising of school uniforms."
}