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{
    "id": 20730,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/20730/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 304,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Laboso",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 63,
        "legal_name": "Joyce Cherono Laboso",
        "slug": "joyce-laboso"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I thank you for remembering to be gender sensitive and also chair sensitive. I would like to add my voice that this is a very important Motion for Adjournment. I want to thank Mr. Ruteere for bringing it. The teachers of this country are right in the action they have taken. I want to support the teachers. This is one area that we all, in this House, unanimously agreed on. We are ready to sacrifice everything else, through the recommendations of the Budget Committee. We are ready to sacrifice other Votes just to take care of this issue of teachers. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we now have over 12 million pupils in primary schools. Quite honestly, you go across the whole of this country and find children roaming around the classrooms in most of the schools because they are waiting for the one teacher or two teachers to come and teach them. It is not right. This is not teaching. We know that we have put all our resources in education right from the biggest budget to the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF). In the CDF we put most of our money in building classrooms and giving out bursaries. However, all that effort will come to nothing because at the end the day, it is about teaching. The children go to school to be taught. That can happen even under a tree. There are many professors who have been made from learning under a tree. The real ingredient that is required is that one person called the teacher. He or she is the one that has the knowledge and information that they want to pass on to the students. So, this is an extremely worthy cause. Even in my own constituency; Sotik, there are so many schools up to class five or class seven but with only a single teacher employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC). How is one person expected to impart knowledge to that number of students? We want quality education. We did not want quantity education. Yes, quantity has been given by the Free Primary Education Programme, but that is not learning. We just do not want to see numbers. We want to see those numbers being translated into educated students. That can only happen through having teachers, as I said. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for the last two financial years running, we have been promised that teachers for Early Childhood Development (ECD) are going to be taken care of, but up to now, that has been shelved. Where are the priorities of this Government? Where are they putting their money? Who is making decisions in this Government about the important issues that we need in this country? I want to submit that their priorities are wrong and that they need to change. In the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) we will not achieve them without educating our children. With that, I support."
}