Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 711859,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/711859/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 116,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Okoth",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 12482,
        "legal_name": "Kenneth Odhiambo Okoth",
        "slug": "kenneth-odhiambo-okoth"
    },
    "content": "While this Motion is good in the sense that it wants to have a bursar recruited in every school, there are some small schools that have 200 or 400 children. When you add one extra staff with an accounts qualification to do that job, it is minimal. This would not be a full time job and if you think about the funding that is being handled with a capitation of Kshs1,400 per child in a school of a 1000 children, it is a substantial amount of money of about a Kshs1 million. If you think about the cost of hiring a school accountant, per year, it might be 30 per cent of the money that you are hiring a bursar to manage. It is costly. So, you will be adding cost to the schools and I can assure you I do not see the commitment from the Ministry to hire these people per school. We need to engage as we push this Motion. There is a policy in which staff can be rationalised. While schools need accounting and bursar services from professionals, we need to make sure that they share these services, so that schools within one ward can have one or two bursars who can go to one school and handle the financial matters one or two days a week and rotate around the other schools. Otherwise, we will end up with a redundancy of people who are not fully engaged and do not have enough work yet they have to be paid full salaries which our poor parents again will have to dig into their pockets. We are going into 2017 and I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that with the issue of the FPE, there is a big elephant in the room where the ruling class in this country both from CORD and Jubilee, in their manifestos, said that by January 2016, 10 months ago, children in this country were supposed to have free day secondary education, but that has not been realised. Parents are out there angry, disappointed and frustrated. This week or early next week, we expect to receive the KCPE results. Children are going to be running to the CDF offices asking their Members of Parliament, whether it is in Sotik, Kibra or Kakamega, for bursaries to go to Government schools in January. As a leadership class, starting from this Parliament, we need to ask the CS for the National Treasury, Mr. Rotich, and the CS, Mr. Matiang’i, to implement the free day secondary education by January 2017. It is already too late, but we need to make sure that our children can go to school. Free day secondary education is something that we really need to deliver. I promise you political rewards under the Jubilee Government, the presidency of Uhuru Kenyatta and the Jubilee majority in this House with control and oversight of the CSs. If we realise the dream of free day secondary education, those will be votes in the bag of Jubilee in a big way. You might not even need to campaign, but if we fail and the Government fails to implement this, then we are trifling around the edges with adding bursars. They are nice, but they are not important. What is important and critical is that every child has a constitutional right under this 11th Parliament. The Government of Kenya in these five years has made sure that we have implemented that policy and our children are not stopped from joining Form One because their parents are poor. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}