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{
    "id": 1451296,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1451296/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 143,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Orwoba",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "I should let them know that I have such high confidence in the nominee for the Ministry of Public Service, Gender and Affirmative Action. In fact, people should know that she has an extensive administrative background. Part of it is that she was a Deputy County Commissioner (DCC) in my Sub County of Sameta. As fate would have it, I believe we will have very good chemistry and she is competent enough to push the gender agenda. I am happy with that nominee. I hope that once she is vetted by the National Assembly and she passes, we will continue with the good work that we have been doing in this gender space. I want to add my voice on this Fire and Rescue Services Professional Bill. Finally, we are trying to professionalize and clean up that industry. I have been listening to my colleagues talking about the standards that are out there in terms of fire and rescue services globally. One of the things you will notice in Kenya is that you only need to take a course for two to three days, then you are certified as a fire safety professional. Other industries have professionalized these skills and have turned it into an industry that many people actually aspire to be in. If you ask children out there what would you like to be, some of them say they want to be a fire safety and rescue professional, but not here in Kenya. In Kenya, nobody thinks about that. We have thousands of youths going out there because they only know of desk jobs. The only jobs we are promoting are lawyers, medical practitioners and those kind of crafts and skills. We look down upon our Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) industry, yet we have an opportunity here to be intentional about professionalizing the fire and safety services industry, so that people can aspire to join that space. I congratulate Sen. Abass for bringing this Bill. This is because one thing it does, is clean up the mess that we have. Every single time we have an issue in terms of a fire, we are always looking at each other. People usually say: “Oh, but there is a fire and rescue from the county government. The national Government also has a budget to deal with this kind of catastrophic issues”. However, it has never been clear. Finally, this is one of the Bills; pieces of legislation that brings foresight, so that we can start understanding how to organize this space. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as we are talking about how to organize the board and the technicalities of even the asset management and making sure that we have the proper equipment, I want to pay attention to certification skillsets and how we are promoting that industry. Unfortunately, not much is in the Bill about that, but I want to just highlight that, in Kenya, I think there are only four or five institutions that are offering this kind of technical skills expert training. We have the ICT college in Thika, the Eldoret Technical Institute and three others or so. They are offering a certificate course. Some that take a month, just short courses. Yet, in the global industry standards, we have people out there, fire safety professionals who take up certification in fire science, degrees in emergency management, which now has a sort of holistic approach on the issue of fire safety. 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."
}