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"id": 213744,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Wambora",
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"speaker": {
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"legal_name": "Martin Nyaga Wambora",
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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to the debate concerning the Vote of the Ministry of Education. Right from the word go, I would wish to come out very clearly in support of this Motion. Indeed, the Budget allocation for the Ministry is the biggest in the entire Government. It is, rightly so, because we give it top priority. The development of human capital is, indeed, the most critical. We know that it is the human capital which actually develops all the other resources. We are lucky that the Ministry is among the most, as my colleagues said, efficient and effective in the Government as indicated by various indicators both in primary and secondary education as well as in university education. This is also indicated by the effective usage of funds. We have also seen the enthusiasm by teachers, parents, students, donors and all other stakeholders. That shows that they are motivated because the resources are well utilised. We are happy with the better pay for teachers because they play a critical role in developing young and old minds. The supply of laboratory equipment to schools has been good. It has been successful and should continue. The increase of bursary funds to both secondary schools and universities should continue. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, having said that, I would like to pin-point six areas which the Ministry officials ought to focus on, even as they continue to do a good job. Let us look at the recruitment of teachers. A colleague of mine, earlier, said that he was happy with the method of recruitment. I will qualify that and say that the recruitment of teachers for secondary schools has been excellent. It is done at the level of the school and it addresses the immediate needs of the school at the right levels. However, some of us are very discontented with the recruitment of primary school teachers because it has discriminated against some districts. The most discriminated district is Embu, which has not had a chance to recruit teachers in the last four years, yet we have vacancies in several primary schools in the rural areas. If we were using the recruitment system used in secondary schools, we would be carrying out recruitment exercise in that district because we have vacancies in the rural schools in Embu District, and especially in my constituency, Runyenjes. However, we are told that we are over-staffed because of over-staffing in Embu Municipality, where the spouses of the Provincial officials are based. So, we have been disadvantaged for the last four years and I would like the Minister and the Permanent Secretary to look at Embu as a special case. In the last four years, we have not filled any vacancies in primary schools. The second challenge we are facing is OPEC funding. Many of us have benefited from OPEC funding, some of us with the full amount of Kshs2.1 million per project. However, we were a bit unlucky because now I cannot see that funding in the Vote of this Ministry. Having received the first phase of Kshs670,000 per project, we are now not seeing any funding in the Ministry's budget from OPEC."
}