HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 209859,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/209859/?format=api",
"text_counter": 82,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Education",
"speaker": {
"id": 190,
"legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
"slug": "kilemi-mwiria"
},
"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I think Mr. Wamwere was about to say that he likes that idea of Members of Parliament contributing to this levy as away of leading by example. I would like to support the point you made that much of what has to take place has to do so outside the context of schools. We need to empower our populations by ensuring that we diversify education so that it is not just the formal system of education that is there, even in areas where it does not fit the most. More important, we should ensure that our people have means. If people are empowered economically and we do much more to support young people, women and others in the rural areas to produce more from their farms, do better in business and generate more income, then even this business of wanting to continue to subsidise the poor is not going to be an issue in the next five or ten years. So, the first thing is to see what we can do for those that cannot support their education in terms of empowering them so that they do not have to depend on the Government or the private sector. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also need to improve our own governance in our institutions. We should ensure that the resources that are available are used more cost effectively so that we reduce the burden of parents, both for secondary and tertiary education. I think there are possibilities for making gain in that area because the reason why education is expensive is because we have not improved the management of those institutions, whereby we can do much more with the resources that are made available. Again, going beyond the education box, we need to strength the African traditional systems and the extended family concept. These are traditions that are dying. For example, the fact that those who were able took care of those who were less fortunate. As our society becomes more Western and more capitalist in orientation, people who have resources become more mean than before. If we were to continue to be as generous as we used to be in the African society, where we took care of the less fortunate, again, there would be less recurrence of these kinds of problems. We have got to a point where the people who are rich despise those who are poor even when they are related to them. This is very unfortunate because the basis of much African socialism in terms of taking care of those that were less fortunate was premised on those kinds of traditions that are dying as we become more capitalistic and more selfish in the way we think and spend resources, which are public resources that we benefited from. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, I would like to say that in the last five years, August 8, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3029 there has been a lot of progress in terms of addressing problems of the less fortunate. That begins with free primary education, much better bursary fund for secondary schools and support to schools in disadvantaged areas and so on. Much has been done by the Government to address that problem. The reason why that was not happening is because we had very poor governance. We had a Government that did not care so much about the poor. It was about misappropriating public resources for the benefit of a few and where public institutions were neglected. Therefore, it is a lesson for us. That, the mother of all these solutions is essentially good governance that will ensure that public resources benefit the poor and are not disproportionately allocated to those that are already doing well. Good governance ensures that people pay taxes and that we do not let many Kenyans, who should be paying taxes, get away with it. More revenue collection has led to the improvement of public institutions. It is quite clear that this has happened because of the problems that we met with regard to the kind of Government that we got. The only way to continue this is to ensure that we make the Government better. We should vote right. We should have people who care much more about transparency, fight corruption more than before and ensure that those that avoided paying taxes before do pay. Essentially, we should ensure that there is that climate that is going to promote the generation of more public resources. That is not going to be possible under a climate where people are just thinking about how much they can make for themselves and their respective families. Public leadership should be about the public good. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, if we can do that and we progress in that direction, we would have money for better institutions and many Kenyans would be empowered economically and would, therefore, pay for themselves. We would also have better schools. In the long run, it is no longer going to be necessary for the Government to be talking about bursary programmes because the majority of the people of this country can afford education. That will be possible because a lot of resources that would have been collected from the public would be used to benefit the public and there would be less stealing of public resources. I would like to say that the key is improved governance. It is the key to many of the problems that we have been talking about in this Parliament. If we could do our best to ensure that this country is better managed and that we think more about the public, then we will resolve many of the problems that have been a headache in the past years. We are already making progress and I do hope that, this is the trend that will continue, so that, in the next ten or 20 years, we should not be talking about those problems because it is primitive to still be talking about so many Kenyans not being able to afford secondary education in a country that is so well endowed. With those few remarks, I support."
}