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"content": "worldwide, including to Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda. They all have Cuban doctors of very high calibre. This is because Cuba exploited modern technology to develop their manpower and to make sure that there are continuous updates. This is a country that eliminated malaria in the 1970s. So, we can learn from them. We do not have to go to China, America or UK to learn some of these things. We can even go to countries that we think are at par with us and learn even more. We have gone round with the Committee on Finance, Commerce and Economic Affairs Chaired by Sen. Billow Kerrow and regrettably found that in most counties, revenue collection is dwindling. Most of them are now colleting less than 60 per cent of the revenue that county councils were collecting. This is without exception. We saw this in Bungoma, Uasin Gishu and in many other places. We have to help these counties take off. We cannot blame them now. When you go to the counties, you will find a parallel structure called the Transition Authority (TA). There is also the county government and the left-overs of the county councils and each one is trying to outdo the other. As we move on, instead of having endless seminars and seeing people flying first class tickets to Mombasa to go and hold a meeting for six hours, ICT will be the answer. Somebody sitting in Maralal, Lodwar, Busia and Moyale can communicate with the centre and share information, experiences, among other things. I tried to do this when I was the Minister for Foreign Affairs and it worked. I recalled many financial attaches and instructed all our missions to operate on a central payroll where somebody sitting in the Foreign Affairs Office would, by 20th of each month, wire salaries and allowances to each mission. This saved the country millions of shillings. Where it was necessary to have accounting officers in terms of revenue fellows, like I banded together the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Iran and Saudi with one person based in UAE--- I banded together Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda with one person based in Kampala, and it worked and saved the country a lot of money. That is why many of us have been voicing this issue that looks misguided, about laptops for children. I have given you deliberately the example of Cuba, to show that if you want to help the children of your country, you must start all of them at the same level. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we are now being told that about 400 children will get laptops. What about the rest? Standard One children alone in this country are over 1.4 million. Now, if you are going to give 400 children laptops, where are you leaving the rest? It is better to organize and realize that a child living in Mathare, Rumuruti, Tenges or wherever must start at the same level. This is because, at the end of the day, these children will do the same exam. When one child is given a laptop and another one is busy crawling in the sand and fighting insects the whole day, and then, at the end of the day, you tell them to go and do the same exam, then we are not doing justice to our children. This is what we have been saying about the misguided laptop programme. The idea is good, but the execution is not good. It is not being done properly or to bring equity among our children. Mr. Speaker, Sir, once these connections are done – and I can see that the Senator for Nyeri wants connectivity even in the Senate – you can sit at your Senate office here and be in active communication with your county. We can get and give information. Some of these Motions that we are passing, directly affect those counties. We can not 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."
}