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"content": "Before I say anything for the first time in the Senate here, I want to thank my voters or the voters of Bomet County for electing me to be the first Senator in the county. Therefore, I want to promise that I will, with all my powers and abilities, serve both the people of Bomet and the people of Kenya in general. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I wish to congratulate His Excellency the President for, first of all, being elected the President of this beautiful country of ours. More so, I want to thank him for taking a very brave step to contest for the presidency of this country, even when he had the Hague factor around him. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also wish to congratulate the Deputy President for also contesting and winning the election to become the Deputy President of this country, again, even when he had similar difficulties. I also wish to thank, congratulate and encourage him to go on, because I think that he is an example of the many hustlers that are there in the country. I think that his profile gives us the view that he is the hustler number one in the country, and he has repeatedly said that himself. I also want to thank him for one other thing. This is one Deputy President in whole of Africa who is a registered student in the university. At the moment, he is a registered student, doing his Doctor of Philosophy Degree (PhD) at the University of Nairobi, where I have been teaching. This is a very excellent example to all the others, including all the hustlers who have very much enthusiastic support for him. So, I wish to congratulate him for being an example. It has given hope for all the other people who come from such backgrounds that they could rise to any level in this country, including the presidency of the land. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I know that a lot has been said about the comments that the President made. I wish to support the Speech made by His Excellency the President. I, perhaps, just want to make a few comments on a few areas. One of the areas that I want to make a comment on is education. I will not take time talking about the laptops, but I wish to make comments on something else that the President mentioned on education. He mentioned that the middle level colleges in this country have simply disappeared. There are no institutions that, perhaps, have been destroyed than the middle level colleges in this country. As we speak, there almost exists no middle level college in this country at the moment. This is in expense of the expansion of universities in this country. I know that it is a very good thing that we have had exponential growth of universities in this country as shown by the number of colleges and institutions of universities that we have and also, the enormous numbers of Kenyans who have had the opportunity to access university education. This has been courtesy of the large expansion of university education but this has come at a very big cost. The cost here has been the decimation of middle level colleges in this country, even when there has been the Ministry of Education and the Commission on Higher Education, to guide the growth of this education centres in this country. It is unfortunate that the Commission for Higher Education watched as the middle level colleges were being decimated and yet, we know that to aspire and attain the goals of Vision 2030, we needed to have the artisans, technicians and all these people to be in place. Unfortunately, we have driven ourselves into a position where there is even a threat of not attaining the goals of Vision 2030, because we do not have the personnel that are able to carry forward these processes. We have already started seeing the consequences of lack of middle level education in this country. This is exemplified by the collapsing buildings in town and bridges. Also, we have seen this in terms of the The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}