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{
    "id": 876405,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/876405/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 359,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker. I thank Sen. Wetangula for bringing up this matter. This is not a matter that affects a single county or a House of Parliament; it affects the entire nation. Madam Temporary Speaker, the Chair has ruled previously that Statements of this nature need to be prosecuted within the Committee. However, this is a kind of Statement that I appeal it be brought to this House, sitting as a Committee of the Whole. This is because it is extremely important and is about resources of colossal amounts. There are people who say that close to Kshs70 billion have been spent or misspent on this particular project. Madam Temporary Speaker, as opposed to other Members who have stood before us and said that giving laptops to children was an idiotic kind of plan, I still believe that the children of this country need to be introduced to technology but not in the form and style that the Jubilee Government wanted to introduce our children to technology. We could have gone for a hybrid solution where in certain areas we provide tablets and in others, computer laboratories. Madam Temporary Speaker, finally, I appeal that we find a way of bringing some of the issues that are affecting the education sector in this country to the plenary rather than keeping them at the Committee. This is because in the education sector, when we are not talking about laptops, we will be talking about a curriculum that is on a foul start or text books. The corruption has now moved from schools; it is now in Nairobi. We will be talking about the Ministry of Education making pronouncements on Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) that makes us wonder what they had for breakfast before they made them. We will be talking about increased fees at the universities while students are threatening to go on strike. We will be talking about issues of D grade students being taken to schools to teach our children to earn A grades. How ridiculous can it get? We will be talking about issues of delocalization, which is a good idea but poorly implemented. Madam Temporary Speaker, I appeal to the Chairperson of the Committee on Education that over and above the request for answers by Sen. Wetangula, we find another way of making sure that the Senate as a whole, the way we were seized of the issues of managed equipment scheme, we have a session to talk about some of the challenges in the education sector. Even though Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) and village polytechnics were partially devolved, the residents of this country still come to us to help them in issues to do with infrastructure. Teachers come to us when they have been delocalized, for example, if taken from Nairobi and sent to Mfangano Island and yet the family is in Nairobi. We are destroying families and professions of certain people. When teachers go for higher courses in respective areas, they are delocalized without giving any due regard. Therefore, even if it is a one day workshop or conference of the Senate to discuss the challenges in the education sector, I volunteer to attend and ask these questions to the Ministry."
}