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"id": 236292,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs",
"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me an opportunity to contribute to this Bill. I will be very brief. Just like my colleagues who have contributed, I am very excited that we have reached this level with this university. We laud our founding fathers who collected Kshs2 from local farmers at the beginning to start WECO. This is a culmination of a long road for the people of Western Province. I want to congratulate the Minister for bringing this Bill. However, I want to point out two things in the Bill that I think the Minister can address at the Committee Stage. One of them concerns Clause 5 on page 1151. A university should not be vetted in the manner in which it opens or extends its constituent colleges. It should not be a matter that should be tied to the President. So, I do not understand why the Clause says that the President may, on the advice of the council by order in the Gazette, establish a college. Once we have established a university, we should give it freedom. It is up to it to decide whether to open a constituent college or not. These constituent colleges should not be limited to Western Province. We can have its constituent college in Mombasa or Garissa. We should not limit ourselves to say: Let us have a constituent college in every district of Western Province. Certainly, it is closer for management and administration. But we have seen this happen in other universities. For example, the University of South Africa, UNISA, has a college in this country. There is also a university in Australia called Monash which has a campus in South Africa and Malaysia. We should now start thinking big. The bounty that is in southern Sudan can open a campus in Juba and give services to the Sudanese. Such a university can open a campus in Mogadishu and give services to our brothers in Somalia. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we have Ugandans trying to open campuses in Kenya here, and our universities should do the same. They should open campuses in Dodoma, Mbale or 3444 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 7, 2006 Kampala. This will help the growth of our universities. It will also help create the diversity that we are talking about. So, I want to urge the Minister to amend Clause 5 at the Committee Stage. This would allow the university administration, on its own, to decide how, where and when to open constituent colleges and not unnecessarily tie this to the Head of State. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, President Kibaki has given this country a lead by disengaging himself from being the chancellor of every university. Being an academician himself, he certainly qualifies to be a chancellor. However, we will have some crazy President who will want to be the chancellor of all universities even if he does not qualify to be one. We should not have a legal instrument that gives somebody a chance to abuse such a privilege. I want to urge the Minister to amend Clause 10 at the Committee Stage. This clause says that the President shall be the chancellor of this university, unless he deems it fit to allow somebody else to be. We should not have such a law in this day and age, in this country! We should only vest the powers of appointment of a chancellor in the President on the recommendation of the university council. We, however, should not say that, unless he deems it fit that he should not be the chancellor, then somebody else can be. That is not right. We should vest that authority in the university council. The council should recommend the appointment of the chancellor to the President, the same way it is done in other countries. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on general issues, I want to talk about the cost of university education. We have the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB). I have said it here before that I think this Parliament, particulary the Committee on Education, Research and Technology and the Committee on Finance, Planning and Trade, should encourage the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance to put more money into HELB, so that funds are available to all our children whether in tertiary institutions like the Kenya Polytechnic or in a university, and whether on parallel degree programmes or not. Students should have access to these loans because the loans will be repaid anyway!"
}