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"id": 189908,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/189908/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Eng. Gumbo",
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"legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. First of all, I would like to thank the Minister for the manner in which she moved the Motion. Being a first time Member of Parliament like me, I must say that I was very impressed with her. My contribution will be very brief. The Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) is a good idea, but I would like the Minister and her team to find ways for greater involvement of hon. Members. The other day I went to my constituency and I was a bit embarrassed to see a gathering. I was told that the youth officer was disbursing money to the youth groups. Please, if a way can be found for greater involvement of hon. Members, that will be good. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, university education is good. Those of us who have had the privilege to get university education are grateful both to our country and those who made it possible for us. I have been a consultant myself and I know that at the moment there is a very big gap up there. There are very few skilled people at the top and then very few middle-level skilled people. Therefore, it makes it very difficult. In fact, I remember one day when I raised a Question in this House and we were given a very embarrassing answer that the Rural Electrification Authority has 38 engineers and only four technicians. The rule should be that for every engineer, there should be, at least, four technicians and not the reverse. So, it is a good idea to build village polytechnics. Here, we are not confusing village polytechnics with those polytechnics that offer diplomas. However, let us try to think outside the box. Let not our village polytechnics be a brick and mortar affair where people merely go to learn how to shovel and how to make bricks. I think we should take advantage of information technology to make them more modern. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, a lot of times we get disappointed when we see our athletes defecting to other countries. At the moment, there is a very sad scenario where Kenyan athletes who have defected to other countries are actually training at the Nyayo National Stadium to go and compete in the Olympics and possibly snatch the gold medals from our own Kenyan 1778 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 10, 2008 athletes. We should not blame the athletes. Every human being, ourselves included, wants a guarantee for the day after. There has been a problem, and I want the Minister to listen to this carefully, because it really saddens me. We have a terrible situation in this country where our athletes only count when they can run and give us medals. I hope the Minister was there when a man by the name Mr. Naftali Temu died, I think, four years ago. Not many people know, but the history of Mr. Naftali Temu should be the history of this country. In 1968, in Mexico City, Naftali Temu became the first Kenyan to win a gold medal for this country. That meant that he became the first man to provoke the playing of the Kenya National Anthem in any Olympic stadium. The year before Mr. Naftali Temu died, he had been diagnosed with cancer of the prostrate. How much money did he require? He needed a mere Kshs60,000! He could not get that money. A year later, Mr. Naftali Temu checked into the Kenyatta National Hospital for the inevitable, and he died soon after. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the big news when Mr. Naftali Temu died was not the fact that he was the first man to win Kenya the first Olympic Gold Medal, it was the fact that he had died in a general ward at the Kenyatta National Hospital. The second big news was the fact that his family could not raise the money required to discharge the dead body from the hospital. When Naftali Temu was buried, the only senior Government official at the burial was the local chief of the area. If we compare that with our neighbours in Uganda, to date, it has only one Olympic gold medallist, a man called John Akibwa, 1972, Munich Olympics. I will not go into the story, but John Akibwa died in 1997. When he died, he was declared a national hero. His body lay in state in the Parliament of Uganda. At the burial of John Akibwa in Lira in Northern Uganda, none other than the Prime Minister of Uganda, Mr. Kintu Musoke, was present. We cannot continue to blame the Shaheen Saifs of this world when they go to Qatar for greener pastures when the only thing we care about is the fact that they can give us gold medals. I think it is time that Ministry got into a private-public partnership so that we can establish a fund that cares for our athletes both when they can run for our country and after they are unable to run. The other day I went to Barclays Bank at Yaya Centre. Right in front of me was a fairly slender man. I asked the watchman, do you know that man in front of the queue? He said that he did not know him. I asked the fellow in front of me and he also said that he did not know him. I asked the fellows I had come with and they answered the same way. The gentleman I was talking about was Mr. William Tanui, the first man to win us a gold medal at Barcelona in 1992. We must show greater recognition and respect for the people who have, indeed, made Kenya to be respected worldwide. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}