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{
    "id": 1250658,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1250658/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 1756,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Bondo, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gideon Ochanda",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. What I am trying to illustrate is … I have tried to check on that across the board in the last three days and it is amazing that we have students in Form One who cannot read or write. I have taken that up with the Ministry of Education. I have mentioned that parents and BOMs in this country are supporting staff in schools more than the Government. They have more teachers than the TSC that they are supporting and that includes some national schools. The national school in my constituency has more BOM supported teachers than those employed by TSC! It is a crisis. If you add on some of the things the Cabinet Secretary for Education was responding to, you sympathise with him. The issue of transiting to the new syllabus and the new curriculum is terrible. We are in a big crisis. I am happy and that is exactly why I am supporting this Budget. This time round, more money has been allocated to the education sector and we need more. If we were able to levelise other sectors, place the rest appropriately, mop up all the money, and allocate more to the education sector, then we can recover as a country. Otherwise, we are in a crisis. Hon. Temporary Speaker, the second thing is debt. I am happy that the Budget proposed is closing in on the deficit. We are talking about Ksh400 billion plus, which was not there before. This is heading towards the direction of debt reduction. The third thing that I was talking about is the issue of food and we have managed to place money on food production and food reserves. We have been in a crisis for the last three years because of the food pricing and availability. If this proposed Budget would focus on that then we are on the right path. Quite an amount of money has been placed on food production though it is not enough. We are talking about agriculture, be it crops, livestock, fisheries, irrigation and stuff like that. However, there are elements of caution that I want to raise: one, these sectors are scattered across many other SAGAS and departments. There is a department dealing with irrigation yet we have the National Irrigation Authority. Money has already been allocated to the two. More money has been allocated to other aspects of agriculture in the name of irrigation but under different departments and my thinking is that we are going to have a problem. Agriculture is a devolved function. So, when we allocate more money to it, where is it going to be placed? The amount of money that we are talking about here is besides the Ksh370 billion that we are allocating counties yet we have Ksh100 billion plus still going to agriculture. Where is this money going to be placed? Where is it going to be placed? How are we able to increase food production? Is it the National Government taking the bulk of the money again or money would be sent to the counties where agriculture, livestock, and fisheries are individually 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."
}