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"id": 225482,
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"speaker_name": "Dr. Kibunguchy",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Health",
"speaker": {
"id": 294,
"legal_name": "Enoch Wamalwa Kibunguchy",
"slug": "enoch-kibunguchy"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this chance to also contribute on this Motion. Before I start, I would like to congratulate my friend, hon. Ojode, for coming up with a Motion that, to me, should be unanimously adopted and accepted by all hon. Members of this august House. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will start off by saying that, probably, the greatest disaster that ever befell this country was this whole concept of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) because during that time, a lot of unpleasant things happened in this country. One of them was the freezing of employment of not only teachers, but other vital workers in other sectors of this country, especially in the health sector. As a country, I think we have not recovered from that. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, one of the things that makes me proud of being part of this Government is that, now, after a very long time, we are funding our Budget solely from revenue that is collected in this country. Therefore, we are being independent and, because of this, I would like the Ministry of Education to move with speed and make sure that we not only have quantity education, like what we have now, but also quality education at all levels, both in primary and secondary levels. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, of course, one of the very prized reforms that the NARC Government put in place is the reform of free primary education. Because of this, we have 714 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES April 18, 2007 an enrolment that rose from 6.1 million pupils in our primary schools to 7.6 million. But we did not have a concomitant increase of teachers in our primary schools. Therefore, we have ended up substituting quality with quantity. As many hon. Members have said, and I would like to reiterate, is that in many of our primary schools now, you will find between 80 and 90 pupils being taught by one teacher. Therefore, the kind of education that the pupils are getting will not, by any stretch of imagination, be education that we can say is quality education. The Mover of this Motion has rightly put it that the shortage of teachers that we have in the country is 56,000. I think, severally, the Minister for Education has said that they are going to employ 40,000 teachers. I would like to urge them to add the extra 16,000 teachers so that we get the optimum number that we require."
}