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{
    "id": 516052,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/516052/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 347,
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    "content": "know, thanks to the NARC Government, from 2003, primary education has been free. The intention of the Jubilee Government is to ensure that by 2017/2018, public education in secondary schools is also free. We know it is a very challenging task involving a lot of resources but the Jubilee Government is prepared to remove that burden of education from the shoulders of many Kenyans. It will also reduce the incidences of leaders being required to be sponsors of every poor child within their counties or constituencies. This Bill will go a long way in regularizing this. You cannot have an industry where people are collecting millions or billions of shillings but we do not know what it does. I am told that sometimes people collect money and buy land or share it out. Some even use a quarter of it. There are also other social amenities that you do not expect funding from the state. For example, faith-based infrastructure like churches, mosques, temples and other religious facilities like rehabilitation centres will continue to benefit from the spirit of fund-raising but then this phenomenon has to be regularized and be done in certain strictures; people have to be vetted, we need to know who is doing this and for what purpose. We must have accountability for funds raised from the public. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I just want to say between now and the Committee stage of this Bill, I will make some suggestions. We must strengthen the penalty section. We must make it completely difficult for people to misuse the system. That way, you will protect bona fide and legitimate people, groups and institutions that want to use this system. We should make it difficult and harsh for anybody who misappropriates money taken from the public. They must be punished five times more than somebody who took money from one person. That is gross misconduct. I am speaking now as a former professor of law; in criminal law, there is a distinction between somebody who commits a crime against one person and somebody who commits a crime against numerous people. There is a distinction in terms of the nature of charges and even penalties. If you kill one person, you are charged with murder but if you kill hundreds, thousands or millions of people, you are charged with crimes against humanity. All the consequences attached to those kinds of crimes are horrendous. We must make it difficult for people to use other people and the goodwill of leaders to waste people’s time. Therefore, we must strengthen the offences section of this Bill. As I have said, I am willing to look at some suggestions that we can make. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, lastly, I want to say that the more important reason why Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o is critical is because in the absence of legislation, the chances that this wonderful idea that was introduced in this country by our forefathers, the founding fathers of this nation, is going to fizzle out and leave out millions of our people in abject poverty. No amount of state intervention will be enough to remove and obviate completely the need for public fund-raising in the foreseeable future. Therefore, without legislation, you are endangering a very good cause. That is why we need this legislation. I know somebody will say we are over-legislating on things that we should not legislate on. I want to say that this is the best we can do until we reach a point, and I do not see us reaching there soon because it is not easy to transform social software. You can transform Kenya’s hardware very easily. You can transform it from a country where people are walking on cattle tracks or footpaths to a country with super-highways within 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."
}