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{
    "id": 229683,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/229683/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 113,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Muturi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 215,
        "legal_name": "Justin Bedan Njoka Muturi",
        "slug": "justin-muturi"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I must say that the President did appreciate the critical or crucial role played by the watchdog committees of the House. However, I must say that those committees make recommendations year in, year out, which are not being implemented. Indeed, when we find flagrant violations of procurement laws and we raise the flag, what we have seen in the recent past is Ministers of Government standing up to defend those positions. We would want to see what the President says here being implemented by Ministers. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, something that I commend is the encouragement of the construction of day secondary schools. However, we need to match our words with our deeds. What the President says here in his Speech is good. We know in very many instances this process of building day secondary schools has also been frustrated by certain other requirements by the Ministry of Education, particularly with regard to registration of new secondary schools. They put such thresholds sometimes about the populations which do not make any meaning because a school must begin from somewhere. It cannot begin with 100 or 200 students. However, to register such schools we are told we must have a population of so many students. As I said, that kind of requirement is stifling what the President would wish to see encouraged in many parts of this March 21, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 39 country. The fact that we do not have enough teachers employed is in itself a discouragement. We need to have a clear policy that tells us that this country requires so many teachers and that the Government will employ them, whether or not our multilateral friends like it. We cannot peg the number of teachers that we will employ in this country to what the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are telling us. We must move away from it. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to comment on the issue of economic growth. As has been said by several speakers, both in and out of this House, we need to translate this statistical economic growth to the people. Our people need to feel it. As it is now, people do not feel it. The situation we are in is like a situation whereby we have a body of a person which is not dead, but the head is put in the freezer and the legs are in an oven and then we are told to declare his condition. The head, of course, as we would expect, is freezing and the feet are burning. We need to translate this growth which we are seeing in statistics down to the people, so that they can feel it. It is good. Indeed, we want to encourage it, but it needs to go down. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, as I conclude, I want to observe quite sadly that in the last four years there has been increased ethnicity. There are too many ethnic tensions in this country. We hear and feel it. It is not good for the country. The country will not grow when we have these kind of tensions. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to support."
}