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{
    "id": 1510338,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1510338/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 392,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang'",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "and it is not a battle with the county governments. This Motion is about the children of this nation. Kenya is a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG No.4 requires that by 2030, all girls and boys should have access to free quality primary and secondary education. Unfortunately, Kenya is off track to achieving that goal despite having Vision 2030, which has similar aspirations. The Cabinet Secretary for Education was here about three weeks ago. You do recall him saying that they have not done the mathematics to confirm how much a child will require for training in primary and secondary school. I thought that was very disturbing. This is because if you have not cost what it takes to train a primary school pupil or a secondary school student, then how then do you finance or even ask for a budget? If you look at the current capitation at primary school, it is a mere Kshs1,440. You can imagine that. There was a Cabinet Secretary who is now a Governor, who said, what is Kshs1,400 when nurses were on strike? He said that could barely cover his lunch at Serena Hotel. Yet that is what we are allocating to our children in primary school in terms of capitation. The Cabinet Secretary again told us that when he asks for the budget, he does not get it allocated fully. This country is earning so much money from diaspora remittances. We should ask ourselves which product is getting us forex from foreign countries. It is labour. That labour is not just rough, raw labour. It is labour that has been incubated in an education system that this country has maintained since Independence or since the days of colonialism. I went to the State of Minnesota in the United States of America (USA). The gentleman who runs the state health or medical programme is a Kenyan. When I met him again, he told me he is now the president of doctors and physicians in the entire State of Minnesota. I asked him where he got his training from and he told me he went to the University of Nairobi. He got a job in the USA and he advanced. It means that Kenya at some point was an industrial zone for the production of highly skilled labour and workforce. However, with this allocation of Kshs1,400 per capita to our children in primary school, are we ever going to produce another head of the medical fraternity in the American state of Minnesota? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, if you are to put the funds that are scattered all over the place together, you would not need to be a rocket scientist, to see that it would be adequate for us to increase the capitation per child, and provide the means of implementation towards free primary and secondary education. These funds are so many and yet we have the HELB. I recently met someone from the university fund. They have so many corporate entities. As part of their corporate social responsibility, they are now doing education bursaries and scholarships. Of course, they are very good, for example, Equity’s Wings to Fly has allowed many people who would not have seen the inside of a university hall, to get to university, to fly and to get job opportunities in banking and financial services sector. We laud them. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, what about these Government programmes? You find that the constituency bursaries in some cases will give a child bursary for the first 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."
}