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{
    "id": 1439697,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1439697/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 125,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kilifi North, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Owen Baya",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. I want to contribute to this. I graduated from Kenyatta University in 1996 with my first degree and with a master’s degree in 2007, but do I say! I used to see Hon. Rachael Nyamai. She was a pretty young girl walking in the corridors while doing her master’s degree in public health. I congratulate Hon. Lesuuda. I studied labour economics which tells us that there are three reasons why you hire an intern. The first one is that you want to train an intern to become a better person. Probably, that is why Kenyatta University hired Hon. Rachael Nyamai. However, there could be another reason. You can hire an intern to work for you at a lower pay, which is exploitation. You can also hire an intern because you want to fill a gap. This country needs to be made to understand why we hire interns. Do we hire them because we want them to work for us at a lower rate, but give them the same job as the employed person? Or do we want to train them to become better workers? Looking at the philosophy of internship in this country, we want to solve an unemployment problem using interns. That is the wrong way. I cannot be hired as a teacher and teach 33 lessons in a week, same as the person who is on permanent and pensionable terms. The other teacher is paid more and yet, we teach the same number of lessons in a week. The other person is called a teacher whilst you call me an intern. That is unfair in labour management. What we have in this country is a convoluted system that people do not understand. If we want to use people by giving them jobs because we do not have enough money to pay them, let us explain it to them so that they can understand that they have been employed as interns to help the country because it does not have enough money to hire the right people with the correct salaries. Today, to hire a professionally trained teacher who has graduated and who is waiting for a job as an intern, but who works as a full-time teacher, is exploitation and should not happen. We need to decide within the realms of labour economics and not misuse people because we want to fill a gap. A declaration must be made on how to hire a person as a Junior Secondary School intern. An intern should work under a supervisor, but should not work more than the supervisor. When an intern is expected to produce results as the supervisor, it is no longer internship, but under-employment. We need to understand this. Are we giving Kenyans internship opportunities or are we under-employing them because we do not have resources? That is why we will have those labour issues. The JSS teachers will go on strike and say that they are lowly paid. But at what time did people start deciding how much money they will be paid as interns? This happens because they have realised that they are not interns, but full-time teachers and they are demanding to be paid for the work they are doing because they are our workers and not interns. We need to have economists in the National Treasury and in the ministries do their work. I believe that every ministry in this country has an economist who looks at things from that perspective and decides the direction to be taken. Even when it is decided at the Cabinet, we need to give people their real titles and their real job descriptions and not misuse the title “intern” and call people an intern doctor, an intern teacher or an intern agricultural officer and yet, those are the people who actually work. They will demand a higher pay because it is within their right and because they are not being trained as interns, but are actually employed to do the work. So, even as Hon. Naisula Lesuuda tables this Bill, when we come to the Committee of the whole House, we will need a proper definition of an intern. This is because if we have a law that calls someone an intern and says that they are entitled to a paternity leave, a maternity leave and other allowances, is that an intern? That cannot be an intern. The definition of an intern is within the labour law and it is clear. This is a person under-study of someone and 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."
}