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{
    "id": 562279,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/562279/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 250,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "If I look round, it seems that if this Bill was in force at that time, our parents would have been fined Kshs500,000, jailed for two years or done community work which would have meant even flogging in public. With a devolved system of governance, it now becomes much easier for us to see the priorities at the local level and use the county governments to come up with solutions to those local problems. For this Bill to be meaningful, we will need to conduct some civic education for parents. The fines here are quite punitive. I guess the intention of having heavy fines of Kshs500,000 or Kshs1 million is to encourage parents to take their children to school. At the age of three years, children are still seen as fairly young in the village and still walk around naked. If ECD is compulsory, then it needs to be free. We need to address the reasons why parents do not take their children to school. One of the reasons is that they do not have clothes that they can put on to go to school. At the age of three, you will find some children not proficient in toilet training. Our mothers, grandmothers and aunties in the village might not be able to afford the things we call diapers, pampers so that their children can go to school and still keep themselves clean and civil throughout the day. So, we need to address those issues. If it is going to be free, then we have to think about the issues of uniforms. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, regarding feeding, the Bill says that county governments may carry out feeding programmes. I hope that when it gets to the right time, we shall change the “may” to “shall”. You are not going to take children to school from different backgrounds and those from poor backgrounds will come without a snack and those from privileged backgrounds will come with some. We need to create some parity or level playing ground. I do not think it would be very expensive if the county governments fund the public ECD institutions to ensure that the feeding programme is mandatory. It should not be a “may” but a “shall”. The issue of corporal punishment has also been addressed in this Bill. At the age of three to six years in the olden days, we were still not immune to flogging particularly if you allowed the goats to stray into somebody’s compound. We are not in a different dispensation where some clever people have decided that those of us who were flogged while young tend to have violent and anti-social tendencies. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, from your demeanor, it appears you were also flogged when you were young but I have not seen your violent and anti-social side. Child psychologists tell us that children can be guided, corrected and shepherded in a different"
}