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{
    "id": 401464,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/401464/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 179,
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    "content": "for finding time to come up with this Motion. One of the biggest ironies of the last ten years in this country is the fact that the Government came up with the Free Primary Education (FPE) Programme. However, it never occurred to President Kibaki in his first five years or even in his second five years or to President Uhuru, in his eight months that the children we are targeting in the FPE programme from Class One must have come from somewhere. Why do they find this very difficult? Maybe it is because of the inequalities that we have in the country. There is a Swahili saying that goes; kuishi kwingi kuona mengi . If you move around the country, you will find that there are many disparities whereby some nursery school children use flash toilets. However, there are other counties where nursery school children sit on the ground and their learning material includes sticks and their fingers. They write on dust. When they want to relieve themselves, they go straight to a thicket. That is happening in Kenya today. The new Constitution, by sending these children to the counties, forgot these inequalities. We are very unequal. If we ask county governments to train teachers, some counties like Kwale – I hope that the Senator for Kwale will take no offence because this is a genuine example – will never have teachers. The Government should recruit the teachers. The few teachers who struggle to be trained using their own means are not recruited, not because there is no policy on equipment but because the Government does not want to pay these people. We must ensure that the Government helps in this recruitment and that we have resources at the disposal of the Governor to pay teachers. If you look at the County Revenue Allocation Act that we passed in this House, you will see that there was something called the Conditional Allocation which specifically goes to help hospitals. I am looking forward to our next allocation of revenue where we should have a particular fund; from that of the national Government, that will go, conditionally, to the county governments for the purpose of achieving quality pre-primary education so that Governors can recruit and pay attractive salaries. Training of teachers cannot take place under trees. There has to be infrastructure. Let us close our eyes and reflect on our counties. How many of our counties have colleges to train pre-primary education teachers? In Kakamega, such institutions are private institutions where even the curriculum is not standardised. If this Motion goes through and we become serious to see that it is implemented, we will have standardised the curriculum and emoluments of these teachers. We will also have ensured that children, irrespective of where they are born, have access to quality education. I cannot end without paying tribute to missionaries. In most rural areas, it is the missionaries who have saved us. Were it not for the missionaries, most of us, Senators, would not be here. We would not have gone to school. We have two types of Kenya; the one of Nairobi and Nairobi-like and the rural area but Kawangware-like Kenya. Kawangware, Mathare, Kibera and Kangemi join the rural areas in giving force to the neglected Kenya. It is only missionaries who go to those areas to build schools and hospitals. Now that we have the new Constitution in force and considering that we have very many young people queuing to become Presidents of this country, we hope that we 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"
}