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{
    "id": 404599,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/404599/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 157,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, my first visit to China was in 2004, and we were all very impressed by the very rapid economic progress and development that we witnessed in their economy. Their economy was then described as an ‘overheating economy;’ growing by over 10 per cent. In one of the meetings, we were given some literature about the Chinese Communist Party and their National Congress. I looked at the list of participants, because their qualifications were also listed, and I found out that 81 per cent of the members of the Chinese National Congress Party were graduates. So, China was a country which was being led by intellectuals. When I looked at the Chinese Government then; the President, Vice-President, Speaker of the National Assembly of China were all engineers; the six levels of their Government were all composed of engineers, and you know engineers are precisely action oriented. I thought this was the secret of the Chinese success. Look at other countries; Singapore and even Iran; the intellectuals are given a high place in that society. So, Mr. Speaker, Sir, if this country is to develop fast, we have to educate our people. We are spending a lot of money on education which has very little impact on economic development. I do not see why we are offering scholarships through the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) for our people to study some subjects which are studied in school – history, religious studies and such things – those are subjects which can be left for people to learn on their own. I think we need to invest our money in areas that are going to rapidly transform our society, and I would think we should differentiate the roles that we are giving to our students. The Government should invest more in students who are learning engineering, medicine and science. Our universities are now learning to teach everything. For example, Kenyatta University started as a much respected university for training teachers; but now they are teaching environmental engineering, although we do not have any qualified professors for teaching environmental engineering. If you look at the courses being taught at the various universities, you will wonder whether these are not names which have just been invented. I think time has come for universities in Kenya to specialize so that we have something like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where we know when we have a Kenyan coming from the equivalent of MIT, that person has been properly schooled in science and technology. Let us have others which specialize in medicine; others specialized in civil engineering, the way the Royal Technical College in Nairobi was intended to do. So, Mr. Speaker, Sir, if we need to be competitive as a country, this Motion has got to be supported, and every county should set some funds aside to provide scholarships because many of our students are poor. Most of our students come from very low income bracket groups and we should provide scholarships targeting our bright students, giving them 100 per cent cover for them to study science and technology. When Mahatma Gandhi went back to India after training as a barrister in the United Kingdom (UK), he went to his village. When he saw boys and girls playing there, he was very saddened and he started crying because he was seeing all these children playing naked there in the mud in India, and he was thinking these are engineers or doctors who have gone to waste. There are so many engineers who will not become engineers in Kenya because of lack of opportunities; there are many doctors who will not become doctors in Kenya 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"
}