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{
    "id": 404595,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/404595/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 153,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Murungi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 93,
        "legal_name": "Kiraitu Murungi",
        "slug": "kiraitu-murungi"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I rise to support this Motion. The time has come for this country to take science and technology much more seriously than we have done before. One wonders why nations like the Unites States of America (USA) are super powers or why they are the greatest nations on earth. When you do a deeper analysis, you will discover that the secret to that greatness or the reason why the USA is a super power today is because of its command or its superiority in science and technology. Mr. Speaker, Sir, people thought that with industries moving to Brazil, China and other countries, the US economy was going to suffer; and that it was going to lose its superiority in the world. But even without the Government doing much, some individual like Bill Gates discovered the Internet. The entire world is now hooked on to the Internet, and billions and billions of dollars are flowing back to the USA, reviving an economy which would have otherwise seriously declined, and all this just because of innovation; because of science and technology. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I happened to travel to Korea, I think, two years ago; it was a meeting of African Ministers and the Korean Government. We discovered that the biggest export of Korea is in the area of science and technology. They were selling some microchips to the USA; so, the USA was their biggest market. But the USA was just an importer of technology from Korea, which as you know in the 1960s was a little behind Kenya in terms of development. Mr. Speaker, Sir, this country appears to be searching for education for education’s sake. A lot of Kenyans are going to school, but if you asked them what they are reading, you will find out that many of them are reading irrelevant subjects or subjects which have no relation at all to the skills required for the job market. It is no wonder that many Kenyans are saying that we are training people for joblessness; we are training people who graduate into streets for tarmacking instead of graduating into jobs. Mr. Speaker, Sir, you can imagine the origins of the universities. In the old days, because universities started in monasteries and there used to be major debates about philosophy and religion, because that is where modern university education started. The big debates in monasteries then were about how many angels can dance on top of a pin."
}