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"id": 201519,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/201519/?format=api",
"text_counter": 78,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Education",
"speaker": {
"id": 190,
"legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
"slug": "kilemi-mwiria"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir for allowing me to respond to this Motion. I would like to say, at the outset, that I oppose the idea of decentralising the HELB loans for a number of reasons. First of all, I will give you a bit of the history of the loan system which was established in 4296 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 3, 2007 1995 by an Act of Parliament. The loan system was established with the broad objective of granting support to Kenyan students in higher education institutions both locally and abroad. The beneficiaries are students in public and chartered private universities. The support is based on their level of financial need. In this connection, the HELB has come up with a criteria; a measurement and an instrument that detects the extent of need that goes back all the way to the schools where the students collect the forms which are signed by people who know them, including local administrators and other people in the local community. The form is again very closely scrutinised by the HELB because the universities have also to give supporting information on the students. It is not true that only a few students from urban areas and areas which are densely populated get the loans. As a matter of fact, all students are eligible to apply for funding. As we have shown, virtually, 98 per cent of the students who apply for the loans are able to receive it. They come from across the broad cross-section of Kenya. As I said, the distribution, with a with a margin of error here there, is based on a very transparent criteria and issues like gender, religion, social background, among other information, is evaluated as long as it is relevant. So, in other words, you cannot be discriminated against because of your religion, or because you come from a certain region or because of your gender or because you have other physical disadvantages, for instance, if you are physically challenged. With regard to the most remote parts of the country, in fact, I would say per applicant, these areas benefit more than the highly densely populated parts of this country. Virtually, all students from the remote parts of this country get loans. As evidenced from one student from North Eastern Province who wrote a letter recently, following a debate we had last Wednesday, in The Standard newspaper of 28th September, he indicated that he collected data about university students from the North Eastern Province. I, occasionally, get students coming to my office, who give me information about students who have missed out on the loan distribution by HELB. He found out that, virtually, all students in university from that region got loans. Virtually, all students from that part of the country got loans. Their complaint was much more with the bursary allocation and the CDF resources that are given out in the constituencies. Their argument was that, in most cases in many of the constituencies, if you are politically-connected to the politicians or you are well-off in some way because you supported someone, you are able to get that money whether or not you need it, as opposed to what the students found to be the actual evidence with regard to university loans. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, in discussing this issue, on whether or not members of certain communities get more loans than others, it is important to point out that there are rich and poor people everywhere. If you go to the slums of Mathare in Nairobi, you will find that there are more people there than they could be in North Eastern Province or Baringo, among other places. So, poverty has got much less to do with numbers as opposed to the socio-economic background of the students and the kinds of occupation available to those who live in those communities. Therefore, it is expected that there would be more needy cases in the slums of Nairobi. Likewise in Kiambu, Kabete or Nyeri; areas of this country which are thought to be well-off, there are many poor people and poor students. There are more poor people there than those in Tigania, where I come from, because of the environment. We would expect that more students from those areas would get support. That has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that those areas are may be being favoured. We should be talking more about proportions. What proportions of the poor from those communities have been able to get support and is the situation the same in terms of numbers across the country? Much has been said about the way forward. I think the way forward is not to decentralise. First, we have to evaluate whether the HELB has become cost-efficient in terms of management. This has taken time. Through time, we have got to a point where we can now say that the management of the loans fund is much more cost-efficient. Therefore, to begin revolving it again October 3, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4297 and to start new structures is to take away money that would be used to support needy students. So, starting new structures is okay if they lead to some cost savings. But if real structures lead to taking money away from those who should benefit from those loans, then there is a problem, and that is exactly what would happen. In any case, there is no guarantee against some abuse. The more you decentralise little resources, the more we are likely to fight cases of abuse. The example of the bursaries has been given; there have been complaints. Obviously, this is not so across the whole country. It is not every constituency that has this problem. But there are problems in a significant number of constituencies. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is also the case with the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) resources. Again, there have been complaints. The point I am making is that decentralisation does not always lead to more efficiency. In fact, it can lead to inefficiency, lack of transparency and use of other criteria for determining who benefits as opposed to the transparency that is now almost being achieved through the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB). If only hon. Members were arguing for some form of affirmative action; if we were saying, because in remote areas, very few students get a C+ grade, which is required to go to university as opposed to those in the more advantaged and densely-populated areas, which have had a longer history of formal education, where many students get higher grades like B, then those students cannot compete. This is so because of the kind of schools they go to and the grades they achieve. What we should be talking about is coming up with an affirmative action programme, in terms of specifically targeting those communities. We should say that if you have a C+ grade from those communities--- If we are saying you need a B grade from other areas where schools are much more developed to go to university, then a C+ grade from disadvantaged areas should be guaranteed a university place. If you do that, you will have more students from those areas going to university and, therefore, benefitting from university loans. I think that should be the argument. The argument should be much more about what we can do to get more of those students to go to universities, because loan allocations are proportionate to the numbers, and whoever qualifies and goes to the university gets them. But fewer students from remote parts of this country, and even from some slum communities, make it to the university. They are fewer in terms of absolute numbers. Therefore, the aim should be to see how we can increase those numbers because if we get them, then loans will be available to them. Secondly, we need to look for other sources of support. Government support has been there for some time. Quite a bit of money has been disbursed through the Government, but it is not enough because of other demands, especially the demand for primary and secondary school education and other needs in the education system, in particular salaries for teachers. So, what possibilities exist for us to ask beneficiaries of university education like private companies to also put in money as a way of giving back by supporting students, because they happen to be the biggest beneficiaries of university education? Why do we not look for a way of getting them to contribute through some form of taxation in support of the loan system? This would increase the amount of money available. Fortunately, already we have some contributions from some private sector players. The East African Breweries Limited (EABL) has a loans scheme; it offers bursaries to university students. There are also the Equity Bank, the Barclays Bank of Kenya and the Ratansi Foundation. There are a number of organisations that provide this kind of support. But we need to go to others, who have the potential to support university education, especially in view of the fact that they are the biggest beneficiaries of this education. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, there are also individual Kenyans who can start programmes for supporting university students. If you look at the philanthropic organisations that are supporting university education in this country, many of them are external. The only indigenous 4298 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 3, 2007 one is the Ratansi Foundation, started by Mr. Ratansi, a Kenyan of Asian origin. The other day, Mr. Joe Wanjui started a foundation, but there are many more Kenyans with so much money that they can use to support students. So, we should encourage them to also start foundations and give them an incentive through tax breaks, which is the case in many countries of this word. The Rockefeller and the Ford Foundations were started by individuals who had money, but the government gave them tax exemptions, because they put money in the hands of the poor. There are not enough Kenyans who are using their money to support Kenyans in secondary schools and universities. There are many who have the ability to do that. So, we have to go out to many of these rich, but mean people, and get them to put back money to communities that have made it possible for them to make this money. I would also like to say that we all need to get much more involved, as hon. Members, in terms of mobilisation of resources, by participating in making sure that the resources that are available are transparently allocated, and that many of the poor students in our own communities benefit. Even from our own resources, as hon. Members, the CDF and others, we should put some money aside to supplement the resources that are available from the Government. We also have a problem because university education continues to be more expensive than it is in, say, India. The example of Uganda has been mentioned, but we should be careful about the kind of university education we are talking about. There has been expansion to the extent that--- If we expand universities, and do not centralise them in cities, and are away from where the majority of people live, you expect that education to be expensive. This is why, for example, we are saying that one of the reasons why university education is seen to be expensive, and out of reach of many, and why we have few students coming in, is because of this tying of admission to bed space. If we opened up universities and brought them closer to the people, so that we have a major university in Kajiado, North Eastern Province and strengthen the universities that we are establishing in the coast region and in other provinces across the country, where students can easily to go to university, even as day scholars, I think university education would be less expensive. It would also be less necessary for us to talk so much about HELB money not being adequate, and being concentrated in the hands of those who come from the more densely-populated areas and urban centres. This is because universities will be devolved. It is not enough to just devolve the money, but I think we need to devolve the institutions themselves, so that they are closer to the people, and so that we have more Kenyans benefiting from university education. This should be done simultaneously with the lowering of the grades to ensure that all those who have a minimum grade have a chance to go to the university. In this way, we will be increasing the pool of those who can benefit from that facility. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, a point was made by Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o on the extent of recoveries. One of the biggest problems, and this is an area that we need to improve on, is loan recovery. There are many university graduates out there who do not want to pay back. The other day a university started an alumni association. There are many beneficiaries of the University of Nairobi (UON) who do not even want to contribute to supporting it, yet doing this is, again, a tradition all over. This tradition of the alumni supporting their former universities and secondary schools will make a difference in terms of improving the quality of those institutions. But beneficiaries of those institutions, about 80 per cent of them, have no interest in their former institutions. I do not know whether Africans and Kenyans are generally selfish by nature, so that you forget whoever your benefactor was. I think we need to get into the tradition of realising that, if I have benefitted from high school education, I have a responsibility to give money so that others can benefit as I did. This also applies to universities. Some of these rich people, who have graduated from universities, should go beyond libraries to support other infrastructure in the universities as a way of reducing the cost of university education and, more importantly, to pay October 3, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 4299 back. This has been the biggest problem for HELB."
}