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{
    "id": 383552,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/383552/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 203,
    "type": "other",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, infrastructure in schools – and that is where this Motion is really key – is very important. When a child goes to Standard One from home in the villages where we grew up, you will find a child who has been looking after goats and sheep, he has never worn a pair of shorts or shoes and he has never sat on a chair. So, when on day one, this child goes to school, with a very neat pair of shorts, a very neat shirt, a small bag carrying a book that he would not know how to use at that time, it is a new entry in life. But when that child goes to school and the first thing he or she realizes is that he or she is going to sit under a tree to learn; the teacher teaching that child is sitting on a stone, he is shocked. In the evening on the first day when the child goes home, if he is from Murang’a or the places we have been seeing, he is bitten by jiggers - with great respect to people from those areas, that child will go with an experience knowing that, that is not the place to go. When we were children and we first stepped into school; we entered into the class and we were given a desk; there is a school monitor who gives you a slate, and a slate pencil. Then, after two terms, you are given an ink pot on your desk with an ink pen. You realize that you have come from a different background to a different environment. Education becomes interesting and good. So, Madam Temporary Speaker, I am telling this Jubilee Government that this misguided idea of thinking that they can give Standard One pupils laptops costing billions of shillings had better be transferred into the spirit of this Motion to build classrooms and to provide desks; not classrooms in areas like some places in this country. You have gone round and you have seen when the headteacher sees a storm coming from the east, he or she must immediately dismiss the children to go home to avoid the risk of the children being rained on, being hit by a lightning strike and all manner of things. Yet at the end of the day, those children will face the same examination with the children of these Senators who are going to academies in Nairobi where they are picked from the doorstep in the morning and dropped at the doorstep in the evening. They will face the same examination with no adequacy and no uniformity of preparation. Madam Temporary Speaker, this is why we fought for devolution; to dismantle the centre and take services to the ordinary person on the ground. It is not enough for us to sit here and talk like this. This Senate has a responsibility and a duty to even form Committees to go round the country to carry out audits to find out, for example, what does Kajiado County require to be at par with Nairobi County in education? What does Laikipia County require to be at par with Nakuru County in education? Then we can now sit and say: “Look, if the Government provided an average of Kshs1 billion per annum for the next five years to build or to maintain classrooms; another Kshs1 billion to equip those classrooms, and another Kshs1 billion for regular support services to those schools,” then you will be surprised to see how much hidden talent we have in this country. Like today, the national Government is saying “no remedial classes for children.” So, children in the rural areas go to school at 9.00 a.m. and go home at 5.00 p.m., learning under trees, under very difficult circumstances. But the children of these"
}