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"id": 224309,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Ethuro",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Planning and National Development",
"speaker": {
"id": 158,
"legal_name": "Ekwee David Ethuro",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to support this Motion. The importance of education in this country can be reflected, just on the surface, by the number of Motions that are coming to this House. In today's Order Paper, you can see a series of them and last week, we discussed a number of them. This House is giving a lot of prominence to education. This is in recognition of the fact that, at the centre of the development of this nation, is its manpower. This Motion by Prof. Mango is considering the issue of the girl-child in particular. When we are in the Kenyan society, which has traditional biases against the girl-child, there is need for the kind of request that this Motion is bringing to this House, where the Government is being requested to fast track and implement Education for All (EFA) programmes among poor sections of this society and in particular, for the girl-child. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what are the poor sections of this society? We are talking about the marginalised pastoral areas in this country and the urban slum populations. Indeed, we are also talking about the fishing folk in this country. These poor sections of our society suffer from the basic lack of infrastructure in all aspects, particularly in education. The issue here is that, when parents consider taking their children to school, the issue is not even whether it is a girl- child or a boy-child. Both genders do not have the opportunity to go to school. In a situation like that, the girl-child suffers double tragedy. When most of these people are sections of our society which are influenced by traditional attitude against the girl-child, then you have a girl-child that does not get the kind of opportunities she should get and even the few opportunities that are there, the male-child gets them. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is interesting that the percentage of girls in private universities is higher, at 50 per cent, while the percentage of girls in public universities is only a dismal 32 per cent. This is where we are really trying to appeal to the Minister for Education, and I am very confident that, according to the Sessional Paper that came to this House on Education, this issue is being addressed. We just want to demonstrate the sense of urgency and make recommendations on how this particular problem can be addressed because where the public resources are, they should be in our public universities. Private universities are on their own but regarding public universities, we have a responsibility to ensure that we cannot even be able to pursue the directive by His Excellency the President that 30 per cent of the jobs should be given to women when we cannot raise a significant percentage of females in our universities. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, what are the infrastructural and institutional constraints that inhibit the attainment of parity? One is that, there is no institution that really ensures that those early childhood education centres are run, managed and staffed in this country. Staffing is one of those critical issues that we have to deal with at the lowest level before we even start the formal primary education. They used to be run by the local authorities, but not any more. I April 25, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 901 want to encourage that the local authorities, county councils and municipal councils should target these institutions as their core programmes under the Local Authority Transfer Fund (LATF). They should set up enough centres and ensure that there are enough children attending them. But more importantly, they should ensure that teachers are recruited and paid. The Ministry of Education has extended a lot of early childhood studies. I know that for a fact because in Maralal and Turkana, we have these centres. We can get the teachers but who will pay them? It is important that this issue is addressed if we want to ensure that the girl-child receives the attention she deserves. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my other concern,particularly in pastoral areas is; to be able to retain these children in these schools, there is need to enhance the school feeding programme. There is need to ensure that the boarding primary schools are properly staffed and that there is adequate food for these children to enable them study. When you come from a poor section of a society, you cannot study on an empty stomach. When parents are moving around with their livestock in search of pasture and water, the young children should be able to get a place where they can learn so that they can concentrate on learning. This will ensure that the declining school enrolment rates can be tackled. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is essentially important that, in urban slum areas in places like Kibera and other slums in this country, the street children are rehabilitated properly. We should dedicate some particular centres in urban areas for the rehabilitation of street children when they are still very young before this problem becomes--- We will no longer be talking about street children in the future; we will be talking about \"street men\" or \"street families\" that are starting to emerge. We really need to address this particular problem because if we do not address it early enough, then we will continue decrying about the declining enrolment rates of these children, thus ensuring that the girl-child does not attain the same level of the boy-child that we are talking about. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to address the issue of the general infrastructure of education for both boy and girl-child, particularly in pastoral areas. If you take, for example, a district like Turkana, where we have huge numbers of children usually feeding into a primary school--- You will get a primary school with a catchment area of about five early childhood centres that are supposed to feed pupils into that schools. You can get almost 500 children in nursery school, but can hardly get even 20 children going to Standard One. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to urge my colleague from the Ministry of Education to look into special areas like Turkana and Pokot Districts and all the districts in ASAL areas. This is a very chronic problem that needs to be tackled. I wish to support this Motion because I know it is trying to address those poor sections of our society. The elites of this society have always maintained that they do not really need Government assistance. They can afford to take their children to private schools. Most children are taken to school almost at an early age of two or three years while children in ASAL areas start going to school almost at the age of ten years. They are not really in a position to learn as students. The Ministry of Education needs to give special attention to this problem. We appreciate that contribution of the free primary education and the contribution of the Ministry of Education to the bursary scheme to ensure that children get to go to secondary school. We hope that in the future this Ministry will also provide free secondary school education. Kenyatta University specialises in early childhood education. They grant degrees to primary school teachers. The training is already taking place. We need basic infrastructure on the ground to ensure that these centres are built and staffed properly. This Motion talks about ensuring that there is sufficient food for children from poor sections of society so that they can continue going to school. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}