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"id": 225484,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/225484/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"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": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to disagree a little with Prof. Anyang'- Nyong'o, who said that we need to get retired teachers, priests and what-not, coming to teach our pupils. I think that we have enough trained manpower who are unemployed as we speak now. So, we do not need to go out and get retired people. In any case, one of the things that we are saying and it is being said out there is that, this Government is in the habit of employing people who should be retired. So, I would like to disagree vehemently that we need to reach out to teachers who have retired. Those people who have retired have moved from one stage to another in their life and they need to do other things. Let us get our youth, the majority of whom are not employed, let us train them so that they can come and train our other youth, who are younger than them. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we talk about free primary education, we need to move further and say: \"It is time that we make a good programme or policy even better\". I was glad when His Excellency, the President, opened Parliament and said that we are going to put forth affordable secondary education. When we talk about affordable secondary education, coupled with the fact that over 60 per cent of our people live below the poverty line, this is the time when we need to come forth and put forward pro-poor programmes. When you talk about affordable secondary education, we mean that the Government needs to move in and assist the poor access quality secondary education in this country. I know that many hon. Members have talked about day secondary schools and I support that idea. We need to go further and say that, if we are going to put forth that idea and say that a majority of our students will go to day secondary schools, we will have to put forth a preposition that day secondary education should be made free. Looking at the figures, and we have said that it costs about Kshs10,000 to educate our students in day secondary school, if we have 1,000,000 students in our secondary schools like we have now, we are talking about an extra Kshs10 billion. This Government can afford to do this to make sure that the very poor in our society can also enjoy the so-called \"improved economy\" that we keep talking about. We need to go that way! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, I would like to talk about equity in our education system. Rich people are the ones who can afford to take their children to quality schools, be they academies or high cost secondary schools like Alliance High School, which costs about Kshs50,000 to Kshs60,000 per student per year. The poor tend to be left out. This problem perpetuates itself. Children who are taken to good primary schools end up in good secondary schools and they eventually end up in universities. Poor people, who cannot afford to take their children to good primary schools, will not manage to take their children to good secondary schools. These are the parents whose children end up in day secondary schools and, therefore, their children do not go to universities. This issue must be addressed. When the Minister for Education comes to give his April 18, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 715 contribution on this Motion, I would like to ask him to touch on this issue. He should try to see how best we can narrow the gap between the children of the poor and the children of the rich. They should all be able to access quality education. Otherwise, we will end up with a class-system in this country, where the rich will continue being rich and the poor will continue being poor. We need to look at this issue and address it very drastically. With those few remarks, I would like to support the Motion."
}