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"id": 229343,
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"speaker_name": "Archbishop Ondiek",
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"speaker": {
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"legal_name": "Stephen Oluoch Ondiek",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, leaving aside the Hummer vehicle, let me talk about education. We must now start taking our education system more seriously. I thank the Ministry of Education for the effort they have made in providing free education. However, looking at the free education, you find a teacher teaching 100 pupils in a March 27, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 147 classroom. This does not make sense, particularly when it comes to Standard One, Two or Three and yet we expect good performance from those classes. It is high time we provided quality free education. I am urging the Minister for Education to really work on how they can provide personnel in the education sector, because the situation is terrible and pathetic. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, although as hon. Members we are making more effort to provide the physical facilities, we cannot, at the same time, provide the personnel. So, I would like to request the Ministry of Education to consider providing funds for hiring personnel in the next financial year, so that our education standards can be improved. With regard to the Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF) and the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF), I think a proper mechanism should be put in place where the two funds can be managed uniformly, so that every hon. Member can know how much contribution each fund can make to a project. There is a lot of confusion when projects are being undertaken. For example, you will find that some funds are provided for a certain particular project by the CDF money and at the same time, the same project is also being funded by LATF. In so doing, you will find one Fund failing to account for its funds. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me talk about the issue of insecurity in this country. It is very difficult for one to be sure if he or she will sleep comfortably because everyday, people are killed, raped and beaten by thugs. We have the police, Army and the GSU who are all paid by the Government. I do not see why we should have all that security personnel earning salaries while people are being harassed on a daily basis. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me talk about the Women Enterprise Development Fund which His Excellency the President talked about. We have not been told where the funds will come from and when they will be disbursed to the constituencies so that we can educate women in our constituencies. It is good that we have been given the funds to assist our women, but we need to know when they will be available at the constituencies. We also do not know the rules and regulations governing the disbursement of these funds. For instance, I was surprised to hear some hon. Members say that their people are now enjoying the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. As far as my constituency and the district where I come from is concerned, people are still holding meetings and collecting application forms and nobody is telling them where the money is. Even the Kshs10,000 the hon. Member was talking about is not available. It is nowhere to be seen. We are wondering if the money is really there, or it was just a political statement to convince the youth to form groups. That money is not enough, and we should not be talking about Kshs10,000. That money is equivalent to what one would walk into a shop with and buy one suit. So, Kshs10,000 cannot help a youth group carry out any meaningful business and make reasonable profit. We should be very serious when we come up with projects. We should come up with projects that can assist our people. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, when our Government took over power, we promised Kenyans that we were going to provide them with employment opportunities. We will go into another general election in December and we have not provided any employment opportunities to anybody. I am one of those people who have not been able to provide any employment to anyone within my constituency. However, I hear that there aret people who are being employed. It is very difficult to know how they are being employed. I have met people who were previously unemployed and they have told me that they are working for certain Ministries. You can never know how these people are employed. Even in this Parliament, people are also employed on a daily basis. It is difficult to know how they are employed. We meet new faces and wonder how they are employed. That is the kind of corruption we are talking about. We should stop it. What we do can also be deemed to be corruption. We should look into that issue and make our people understand how we are running the country. 148 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES March 27, 2007 Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, who is exercising tribalism? It is not His Excellency the President. If, for example, a Mr. Onyango holds a particular position in an organisation and he employs another officer working under him called Mr. Onyango, does that mean he is tribal? If I am a Minister for Finance or Co-operative Development and Marketing, for example, and the person I appoint in a co-operative institution or a parastatal is my tribesman, definitely that is tribalism. If I am a Minister called Mr. Onyango and all officers working under me such as the principal accountant, the chief financial controller and the accounts controller are all my tribesmen, that is tribalism. I do not know what you want us to define as tribalism. Those are the kind of practices that we should stop. If I am heading an institution, I should mix people from different tribes. There is nothing wrong if I appoint a Kikuyu, a Luo or a person of another tribe to work in an the institution."
}