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{
    "id": 140565,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/140565/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 346,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Otichilo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 131,
        "legal_name": "Wilber Ottichilo Khasilwa",
        "slug": "wilber-ottichilo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this important Vote on the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology. First and foremost, I want to congratulate the Minister and the Ministry for coming up with very good programmes. I am a member of the Education, Research and Technology Committee. We were very much impressed by the programmes that she has come up with, although they were not given the money that they requested for. I think that the programmes that they came up with are very encouraging. If they are well implemented, they will go a long way in improving science and technology in this country. Having said that, I would like to congratulate the Ministry on a number of decisions they have taken, which I think are very important, with regard to technical institutions. Technical institutions are actually the foundation of development in any country. If you go to the US and also in Europe, you will find that the tertiary institutions are the drivers of the economy. I am very much impressed that the Ministry has taken this very seriously and in this financial year, they have proposed to construct eight technical training institutions. This, to me, is a real milestone. They have gone ahead and proposed to come up with an authority called TIVET which will control or mainstream technical education in this country at the tertiary level. This is something which I would want in future, probably in the next Budget, to be allocated more money. This is where we are going. If we are going to industrialize, it is the technical institutions that will make us industrialize. Producing academic graduates from the universities is good but they cannot be the hands-on people. Therefore, I would like to see the Ministry mainstream and focus mainly on technical institutions. I also want to congratulate the Ministry, for the first time, for proposing to come up with the research foundation in this country. This is extremely important because previously, research work has been lacking in this country. We have so many institutions such as the National Council of Science and Technology (NCST) which has been there for very many years. However, it has not been given the funding that is required to make it play a major role in research work. Therefore, the establishment of a research foundation will coordinate all the research in science and technology and innovation in this country. This will give us a real good foundation to play the role of creating knowledge. We are in the 21st century. This is a century of knowledge economy. Research, science and technology are the drivers of knowledge economy. Therefore, the establishment of a research, science and technology foundation is extremely important. So, I will look forward to this foundation being set up, so that we can see our researchers access money to carry out research work."
}