Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 711860,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/711860/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 117,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Okoth",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 12482,
        "legal_name": "Kenneth Odhiambo Okoth",
        "slug": "kenneth-odhiambo-okoth"
    },
    "content": "Every child has a right to go to school. We are talking here about education and the management of education funding. It has to start from the top. We are looking at the Budget Policy Statement (BPS). Yesterday, the Departmental Committee on Education, Research and Technology got a very good briefing from the Parliamentary Budget Office and our fiscal analysts on what has been proposed for next year. Enough money has not been proposed to make sure that there will be free day secondary education. This country puts priorities on things like the SGR, the Eurobond and many things, but we are doing a great disservice if we do not put people first. The people first will change this country. We can escape from issues of poverty, radicalisation, crime and prostitution. The young children need a chance to be treated like equal Kenyans through education. Education is the greatest equaliser. I am feeling very frustrated and disappointed that up to this point, we have not taken a sense of urgency to make sure that, together, CORD and Jubilee Members of this House, can push for the Budget for next year to have the money for free day secondary education that all our children can go to school. This is something we can afford to sacrifice and cut money from other areas of the Budget where there is wasteful spending. These are Ministries whose reports and allocations are superfluous and very high, for example, the Ministry of Health which just had a huge scandal of over Kshs5 billion that was not properly explained. There are questions on the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. There is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and we wonder how they spend some of their money. We should go back to Kenyans and tell them “we are here to serve you, the Government belongs to you, you are the sovereigns and the priority is your wellbeing and the future of our children through a quality education”. Let us put in the policy of free day secondary education and make it happen. Secondly, let us follow the gazetted guidelines of the cost of boarding secondary schools. The Government owns those schools, but they are charging high prices that to many average Kenyans in places like Kibra, Kawangware and Korogocho are private school fees that are keeping children away from their right to education. This country will pay in the long term for it when we keep away the children of the poor from their right to education. It is a price we will pay when that generation comes around and does not have hope, it is frustrated and feels they are not Kenyan enough. I support this Motion that we need proper financial management in our schools. We need to deploy creatively and strategically accounts managers who are called bursars to run the affairs of the schools and assist the head teachers in any of the money that they are handling. We also must, at the top, make sure that all children go to school as a right and the gazetted school fees for boarding secondary schools is very minimal and affordable to all Kenyans. For children who can walk to day schools, we should make sure that they can walk to those schools. In Kibra Constituency, we have deployed the NG-CDF under my policy of Elima Kwanza or Education First, into building new secondary schools and increasing classroom capacity. The TSC has given us support. We have more teachers and head teachers assigned to our day secondary schools and now, children who cannot afford boarding schools have schools that are affordable, accessible and of high quality by Government standard. They are not held to find for themselves cheap private schools that are not offering the quality that is required. 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."
}