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{
    "id": 583023,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/583023/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 402,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "they work in very awkward areas and nobody seems to understand their working conditions until you get there. I am saying this through experience because I have been to places like Kilifi, Nyanza, Turkana and parts of north eastern. Teachers have no decent houses. They do not have offices. The classrooms have no doors or windows and boys can jump through them. When it rains, it is the teachers who take care of the kids. Teachers are like maids and they accompany the pupils everywhere. The other day there was an incident in Mombasa where some seven students died and the teachers were blamed that they could have prevented the death. The teacher has to make sure that the students are contained. This is the work of a teacher. That is why we are saying the pay rise of 50 to 60 per cent that is being demanded by the teachers is even little. They should have gone for more because the kind of work they do is not comparable to any other profession. I have been a teacher for 30 years. Of course, I would have been a very rich person if I was in another profession. But after I left the university in those early years, my first salary was Ksh2,000, yet I was at the university like everyone else who was doing Commerce, Engineering and so forth. I was discriminated against as a teacher and given a little salary. The other students who did Engineering, Law and so on that I left university with were earning between Kshs30,000 and Kshs40,000. So, the problem even starts at the training colleges. That is why even with harmonization which was sealed in 2012, it was just by sheer luck that others were already earning very high salaries. For Sarah Serem to say that harmonization was done in 2012, to me, that is a drop in the ocean. We need to treat teachers well because it is only through education that we can talk of development. So, unless we have a sound education system and background, we will lose it. If you are not aware, the exams are at the corner. This Friday, the Cabinet Secretary (CS) will be launching the stakeholders meeting, to tell them about how the exams will be conducted. How can you carry out examinations without teachers to supervise and invigilate them? They are the ones who know the tricks that the boys and girls use to cheat in exams. So when you get, say, a policeman or a housewife who does not even know how cheating happens in an examination room, there will a lot of cheating. When cheating happens, we will be condemned internationally, because of conducting exams which are not standardized. So we will be blamed and Kenya will be singled out as a country which will have conducted examinations which are not credible. So, to have reliable and dependable exams, we must depend on teachers, and that is why we have to pay them. After the examinations are done, the marking is done by the teachers. Who will mark the exams? If the marking is not done on time, so that the Kenya Certificate for Primary Education (KCPE) results are out by 30th December and the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE ) results are out by maybe January or February next year, there will be double intake in universities---"
}