Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 834232,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/834232/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 302,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Rahim Dawood",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2572,
        "legal_name": "Abdul Rahim Dawood",
        "slug": "abdul-rahim-dawood"
    },
    "content": ", (North Imenti, JP): Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Even though we are debating another Motion, I had wished to contribute to the previous one. I agree with Hon. Caleb that we need to have a policy in place on how we can expand our public schools. We even need a policy whereby for schools in urban centers that have no more land to expand, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology should set aside funds to facilitate the schools to grow structurally because in urban centers it is difficult to get land. Even if it will be available, it will be expensive. We need remedy for this. If it is done through the NG-CDF, it will be cheaper than giving money to the Ministry. In the 11th Parliament, there was money - Ksh5 billion - that was allocated for classrooms construction from NG-CDF to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. You cannot believe it, but where we were constructing a classroom with Kshs650,000 to Kshs700,000 from NG-CDF, the Ministry was using Kshs1.2 million per classroom. So, we wonder whether there are two ways of making classrooms. We know how much it costs to make a classroom, how can it cost double? If this thing is left to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to go and source for land and expand schools, it will be wrong. We have seen, for example, in the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) where we had land acquisition, the prices shot up when they knew the Government wanted to buy. If it is a private buyer, the prize will be less than a quarter of the Government’s value. So, if we have a policy on purchasing land, we need to know what the market rate was before land appreciated in a certain place. We need not just buy land, but we need to know where the land is. We have a lot of public land in this country that is lying idle, for example, in the chiefs’ offices or elsewhere. We need to make use of such public land to establish schools because we cannot have public land being grabbed then we go to buy land for schools. Therefore, I support this Motion and I hope once we establish the policy, as Members of Parliament, through NG-CDF, we will be given the money to build those schools. There is a school in my constituency that was built through NG-CDF Funds. By the time they were The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}