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"id": 211216,
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"speaker_name": "Eng. Okundi",
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"legal_name": "Philip Okoth Okundi",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to support this very important Motion. As we stand here today, if you go to many secondary schools in this country, at least half of them in the whole country are suffering from non-payment of school fees. It is so bad that in some areas some schools are completely devastated. The result is that the performance collapses, and so we find that we, as parents, have our children going to these schools and there is no hope, because they are not going to do well. The school fees situation reflects the poverty situation in this August 1, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2911 country. I think that the Government must listen to this, and must find ways and means of dealing with this thing with regard to our children. I am a bit disappointed that this very important Motion is being discussed when there is nobody here from the Ministry of Education. This is a very important Motion. It affects the future of this country, the future of our children and it affects us as we are today. When this Government announced free primary education, the enrolment went up almost double. People were so enthusiastic that even those at very advanced age went to school. In fact, the best thing a nation can give its people is education. When Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK), he was asked what his priorities are. He said: \"The first, second and third priorities are education.\" He said that early this year. If a very advanced nation can give that kind of priority to education, what about us? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I agree with my colleagues who have said that we need to amend the Motion and face the issue of free secondary education. Let us face it. If we look at the wastage of our natural resources, money, taxes and so on, it is done through corruption, mismanagement, poor spending or badly planned projects and programmes. If the nation was disciplined, with proper spending and putting money in areas which deserve attention like education, we can easily afford free secondary education. I am sure about that. Countries that have realised that step--- I thank Prof. Maathai for saying that East Asian countries made that step because they put education as their number one priority in their political and planning drives. They have educated their people and made sure that they know what they ought to do in order to live and drive their economies to success. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Government introduced bursaries to secondary schools. The budget for that is about Kshs800 million per year. That is extremely inadequate. It helps a little, but it has generated a great deal of demand for more bursaries to be given, to help the school fees situation. People are so poor that the first thing they talk about is their children in schools. They mostly ask for money for school fees, clothing, transportation and food. That is an area that this Parliament ought to enact a proper Bill and push for action to be taken. If the money allocated for bursaries would have been increased before we lined up for free primary education, very substantial steps would have been taken into account, which would have provided attention to education. I would suggest that the budget be increased substantially to boost the bursaries, and clear certain fee arrears for the time being, while we are introducing the process for free secondary education. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, at the moment, the amount of fees arrears is very huge. Let the Government, as has been requested before, write off the current fees areas, so that the schools that are faced with that problem can start operating again. We are writing off a number of things such as loans through SACCOs, coffee farmers and so on. Let us start steps to write off those arrears. That would go a long way towards the process of proper attention to education for our people."
}