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"content": "If the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) will be there, it will be a major factor. In fact, CDF is used largely for education purposes because many other things have been devolved and are being handled differently. We, therefore, need to have a representative of the County Assemblies and a representative of the Members of Parliament. We cannot load all of them. A county like mine that has nine Members of Parliament can sit and nominate one of them or better still, they can even rotate and have one of them sitting in this Committee every year. The MCAs can also do that, so that they are able to monitor the interests, if this board is necessary. When you go to Section 25A; the creation of Sub-County Education Board, my thinking is that this is totally unnecessary because if you have a board in the county, you cannot have another board in every constituency. In a county like Nairobi, with seventeen constituencies, you will have 17 other boards sitting with 12 people and the chairman of the board making it 13 multiplied by 17. All those boards will be money guzzlers. I am sure we can use our money differently. There are many schools which do not have, as you said, libraries, books and basics for learning. I want to urge that the Committee on Education of this House look at this differently. If we find the big counties like Bungoma, Kiambu, Kakamega, Machakos, Meru and Nakuru, we can then design a way of having them have three sub-county boards then cluster the constituencies, so that we do not have too many boards doing the same things for to do this is wasteful both in terms of money and so on. The people who will sit in the Sub-County Education Board include the Sub- County Education Officer, Representative of the County, Executive Member in charge of Education who will sit in both boards – again this does not make much sense. There is also a representative of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) sitting on both boards; a representative of the Association of Private Schools, the churches nominating conferences of bishops, Muslims, one representative of persons with disability and so on. We will have two people nominated by the primary and secondary schools heads and the Deputy County Commissioner (DCC). Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, how many deputy commissioners are there in each county? Only one! The others are called sub-county commissioners, those who now hold the positions that used to be held by the District Commissioners (DCs). President Kibaki at one point gave out so many districts. He decided that every constituency should be a district. Therefore, the position of the DC was renamed to Sub-County Commissioner. Therefore, who is the DCC in the case of Nairobi County who will sit in 17 boards? That means that he or she will do nothing else. In Bungoma County, for example, he will sit in nine sub-county boards because each county has only one DCC. This is not properly thought out. I would like the Senate Majority Leader to relook into it. The Bill further states that:- “In appointing persons to be chairpersons and members of the sub-county education boards, the Cabinet Secretary shall observe the principle of gender equity, regional, ethnic and religious balance as well as transparency and openness.” However, what will happen to counties that have only one ethnic group. How will these principles be applied? These are things that are already in the Constitution. Therefore, he should say that constitutional provisions must be observed where 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"
}