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{
    "id": 1443959,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1443959/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 70,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Kamar",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 33,
        "legal_name": "Margaret Jepkoech Kamar",
        "slug": "margaret-kamar"
    },
    "content": "bursary through which they are trying to bring free education. Our youth are telling us that even that bursary is released in a very discriminative manner. Not everybody who is needy is given that money. During our days, bursaries belonged to people who were not able and anybody able was not given. Today, nobody knows who gives the bursaries. More still, especially when it comes to this House, the bursaries have moved from being a national agenda to the counties. How did the governors decide to give bursaries? Today, in the Education Committee, we went through the analysis from the Budget Office on the budget and expenditure of the Financial Year 2022/2023 in the education sector. Shockingly, we have govrnors who have spent eight per cent of whatever they have given to the education sector on bursaries. What are they looking for in these bursaries? I will bring a Motion to this House, so that we ventilate on that. The education sector was devolved in the Constitution; the Early Childhood Education (ECE) and Vocational Training Centers. Those sectors are not funded because we want to give bursaries to the tune of eight per cent or even the 85 per cent that was given by one county. This is duplicating what is going on in the national Government, which means that we cannot take care of the sectors that have been devolved. This House must interest itself in what was devolved; ECDE and VTC. When we were in Turkana, I remember the Chairperson of the County Public Investments and Special Funds Committee (CPIC) telling us that the whole of Turkana was becoming--- What zone was it? He said that whatever had been promised in the documents as done had never been done. The reason is that governors are changing the agendas midstream. You request money for education and then divert it to other agendas. We must interest ourselves in what is devolved. It is important that when we talk of bursaries at the county level, we need to ask ourselves whether we have that money. Have we taken care of ECDE and VTC? If not, then let us first focus on the things that are ours. The second area I wanted to touch on is higher education. Two weeks before the problem we faced, the Committee on Education had a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary and the various sectors. We wanted to understand this new formula being used. The formula itself is good because there is a return of what we used to call boom in those days. There is a return through the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB), but how is it going to be applied? The questions our youth are asking have to do with how to apply the money. Are we sure that everybody is going to get the same money? This is what we want to look at when it comes to higher education. Again, when we say education is a right, it must be all the way through. The loans and bursaries are there from the different sectors. There is what we call the university funds being given to every student. We appeal to the Ministry of Education to be straight and clear. They must take care of everybody, so that the equality that education brings can be realized. The third one was about fair employment. Some of us were involved during the promulgation of the new Constitution and in the Bomas process. The main problem that we had in the bomas process was the inequity in this country. It was that there was The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}