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{
    "id": 282407,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/282407/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 312,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Trade",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this country has done very well in the last ten years on infrastructure. A lot of roads have been done and a lot of facilities put in place. But sometimes it disturbs me to hear like today we are having heavy rains for the last two months and new roads are being washed away. How do roads survive the weather in the Amazon Basin, Congo Basin and the jungle of Indonesia and Malaysia where it rains from January to December? Why should a week’s rain wash away a highway? It means we are not doing the correct things and somebody has to be held to account. We vote money, roads are done; they are actually just a veneer of roads because I cannot understand how a week’s rain can wash away a tarmac road or a bridge made of concrete. These are issues that we must address. The Government has provided money, roads are done but they end up not being roads. People must be held to account! On the issue of teachers, this Government has done extremely well. We must congratulate ourselves for free primary education and for nominal free secondary education. Unfortunately this has not been matched by the generation and creation and employment of equal number of teachers to meet the challenges in education. I wish it can be addressed so that when you go to rural schools, you find a school with a thousand children in school but with six teachers. This, obviously, cannot enable these children to compete with those in urban centers where a school with a thousand children has 20 teachers. First, we need to rationalize and dispatch the distribution of teachers properly and employ even more teachers if the rural and urban children have to be brought at parity to compete for the same national exams that we so much value in the progression to the next level. I am a firm believer in regional integration and it is only through regional integration that this country will be able to move forward in terms of economic well being. We have consciously said that our market outlook is a leading regional hub than elsewhere. Little wonder if you look at the trade figures, Tanzania is slowly overtaking Uganda slot as a trading partner. For the first time, the trade balance between Kenya and Tanzania is favouring Tanzania. I hope this will spur some positive thinking in our brothers and sisters in Tanzania to see the meaning of regional integration."
}