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{
    "id": 85378,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/85378/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 369,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Ogari",
    "speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Trade",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 385,
        "legal_name": "Simon Ogari Arama",
        "slug": "simon-ogari"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I want to appeal to the Ministry of Education to also try and see if they can implement the recommendations by encouraging our students to go to Russia and read. We have to renegotiate the scholarships because some of them are partial scholarships. Maybe we will ask the Ministry to try and get full scholarships instead. Also on the other hand, we have quite a number of students who are privately sponsored and some are in a lot of financial stress knowing very well that Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world. But then one wonders why we cannot allow those students who are already in Russia to take full scholarships that have not been taken. They are Kenyans and they are qualified. The other issue which has been highlighted on education is that of our Ministry engaging the Ministry of Education in Russia so that our students can be allowed to have attachments because quite a number of students are doing technical courses; engineering, medicine and the rest which require attachments and practical learning experiences before they graduate. Kenyan students in Russia are not allowed to do attachments there. It becomes quite difficult and cumbersome and expensive for Kenyan students to do their attachments here in Kenya. The Russians have nothing against it only that it has not been addressed. I think that is why we were there. We started the ball rolling and I am sure with these recommendations, we urge the Ministry of Education to take up this matter and make sure our students are allowed to practise or to do their attachments there. The issue of loans from here also came up because these are Kenyan students. They are as Kenyan as the others studying in the University of Nairobi or US or India. We made that recommendation at the request of the students themselves that they should be treated like other Kenyan students and have access to loans from the Higher Education Loans Board. My colleague has touched briefly on an agency in this country which is organizing or which organizes these scholarships or trips to Russia. I even ended up meeting one of the students from my constituency who had a very bad experience. This agency is called Kenyarus and is based in Nairobi. It is the one which has been organizing for students to go to Russia to study there. But just like it was put before, they are never given full information and by the time they get there, they find the cost of living is much more than they anticipated. We all know once a parent has been convinced that the tuition fee is this much and the cost of living is US dollars 500 or 500 Russian Roubles per week, that is what the parent will send. We talked to the students and we were able to assess for ourselves that actually they are right that the information they get from here and the information the parents are given is not the whole truth about the life there and about the expenses there. So we are requesting the Ministry of Education to try and investigate this agency so that we can find out what exactly they are doing with our students. We do not want students to go there and become beggars. I also had the opportunity to represent the delegation when we came back home, on behalf of our team leader, in paying a courtesy call on the Russian Ambassador to Kenya on 30th June, 2010. It was basically a courtesy call and to brief him on our experience in his home country and also on whatever recommendations we had done. It happened that, that is the same day that this Report was being tabled in the House here, so it was not public yet. But we were able to discuss in general and he also reminded us about the issue of those scholarships which are not taken up. He also told us that they are going to invite our Speaker at any time, which by now I hope has happened, but they were very ready to invite him to go to the Duma to discuss on our relationship and friendship with Russia. This is aimed at strengthening the recommendation that we had made to our own Speaker about having a special team of Parliamentarians from Kenya and Russia having constant meetings and trying to arrange ways of working together as friendly countries. We also reported that to him and he was very receptive about it. He agreed that he is going to contact his counterpart. I believe by now something is moving. So, I would like to finalize by saying that Russia is ready to do business with Kenya. Russia wants to come back. We cannot over-emphasize the reasons why Russia, which was supposed to be very strong in Africa, left. It left because of the Cold War but that is no more. We also want to emphasize to our friends in the West that we are not looking for ideological dogmas from the Russians. In fact, now, they do not have anything different from the rest of us. We are just looking for friendship, partnership and, maybe, business together."
}