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{
"id": 197147,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/197147/?format=api",
"text_counter": 35,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Wakoli",
"speaker_title": "The Member for Bumula",
"speaker": {
"id": 208,
"legal_name": "Sylvester Wakoli Bifwoli",
"slug": "wakoli-bifwoli"
},
"content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, as a country, we are definitely faced with challenges. This Government pledged a number of promises last time and some of them are being fulfilled. We want to appreciate that some of the promises pledged are being fulfilled. For example, free primary education (FPE) was promised to Kenyans and now free secondary education (FSE) is being given to Kenyans. However, it is about the quality of education. The question some of us who have been teachers are asking ourselves is this: Is the FPE really quality education? Is free secondary education really going to be quality education? Look at a scenario where children have been collected from the villages and taken to school; and yet no single extra teacher has been employed to take care of the additional number of students who have joined school. The challenge to the Government, now that we are one thing--- We happen to have no opposition. What we should think about now is how to employ more teachers and motivate them so that our children can learn well. Currently, our children are not learning. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the truth of the matter is that children go to school to listen to teachers who we are terming as politicians. For a politician, he can address a rally and he will be assessed by being voted for. I do not know, when a teacher addresses 100 students, how he or she will be assessed because it is the child who should be assessed for listening. Out of 100 people listening to one person, who should know whether the same child has understood or not? The challenge is very big that we must rise up and make sure that we employ teachers. At the same time, we must also pay the same teachers well. We should not just give them a heavy load, but they can also work knowing that apart from teaching more than they taught before, they also earn something a little more. That is a problem that we, as a nation, must address. Mr. Speaker, Sir, as I speak, the prices of farm inputs have gone up. Right now, a bag of fertiliser which used to cost Kshs2,000 costs Kshs4,000. What is the Government doing to assist those farmers who ran away from their farms? How are they going to be assisted so that they can plant now that the rains have come, and yet they are still in the camps? They are not on their farms. We should make an effort to walk over there and supply fertiliser. This Government should issue an order reducing the price of fertiliser to enable farmers to plant, so that they will not experience hunger in future. March 20, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 317 Mr. Speaker, Sir, another thing is that the same people are being killed. This is happening in Mount Elgon and Trans Nzoia districts where the fighting is still going on. We are not even allowed to know what is happening in Mount Elgon. This Government should inform us what is happening in Mount Elgon because, now the Press is reporting this today, and yet tomorrow we read other things, and yet people are dying. We are burying our relatives every day, and yet here we say we have acquired peace. I thought where there is peace we should have people living and dying naturally and not dying because someone has killed another. With those few words, I beg to support."
}