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    "id": 599577,
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    "content": "possible, that candidate is able to avail themselves for identification purposes. I think the idea here is that it is going to be possible for people to give their photographs at the school level and passed to the DEO. This ensures that there is a direct link. Therefore, the issue of confusion should not come up. The fact that the photograph will be embossed on the certificate is very good. When this Bill becomes an Act, just like the way we have an Identification Card (ID) with a photograph, we can have the provision of a picture of a person so that we do not have this problem of people going around with other people’s qualifications, which I think Sen. Lesuuda also mentioned. Madam Temporary Speaker, it is amazing how people continue to do this because, at the end of the day, you will be discovered, sooner rather than later. If you have a certificate in computer proficiency and you are told as your first interview to open the computer and you are not able to do so, or you are given a simple exercise and you cannot do it, then you will be identified immediately. So, it is really an exercise in futility, but I think we have put in so much emphasis on academic credentials and you find more people struggling in whichever form to ensure that they get those particular credentials, no matter what. This has become a very dangerous trend. It is a trend that we are really suffering from. The issue of security, accuracy and verification is handled at a very detailed level. A candidate’s name, index number, the school code and the grades for the respective subjects that the student has acquired will be put there and that becomes critical. Madam Temporary Speaker, the main problem that this Bill addresses is the question of the structural administrative passing on of documentation from one institution to another. Putting in mind the failures of the past, in that the institution that had been given the provision to do this has not been able to do it adequately and, therefore, there have been various problems that have come as a result. The Cabinet Secretary for Education, by putting such administrative structures into place to facilitate this issuance, will make it very easy for this to happen in a constructive manner. The issue of forging, cheating and changing documentation can be addressed from a technological point of view so that over time, it does not come up as something that is going to be problematic. Madam Temporary Speaker, every head teacher and principal in each of the examination centres will have to ensure that they have a way to verify. So, the issue of photographs comes in as a critical thing. I think the most important thing is to have the penalty which this particular amendment also proposes. The amount should be a deterrent for it to be effective and here it is because somebody would either have to pay up to Kshs800,000 or one year in jail or both. That should be a specific deterrent that should be able to make somebody think about what it is they are doing so that they cannot put it into place or be able to contradict what is expected of them. Madam Temporary Speaker, we do not want to be able to open up a Pandora’s Box. This is because, at the end of the day, we want a level of responsibility and mechanisms within the educational systems. We want to see those systems working and address inequalities uniformly at the level of the issuance of a certificate. These inequalities already exist at the level of access to the schools or to education. They also exist in terms of the results that people will get depending on the social capital and the 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."
}