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{
    "id": 88176,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/88176/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 305,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Khalwale",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 170,
        "legal_name": "Bonny Khalwale",
        "slug": "bonny-khalwale"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I cannot conclude without making a small comment about our teachers. Our teachers are the ones who preside over national examinations that enable our children to go to universities to access this Higher Education Loans Board (HELB), and I am glad the Minister is here. It is very embarrassing to see that the welfare of teachers is not addressed during national examinations. These teachers, to mark those examinations, are accommodated in dormitories where little boys and girls sleep. We allow adults like hon. Mwatela to go and sleep in a dormitory in a girl’s school because they want to mark examinations. This kind of teacher is not properly motivated to be alert to give what the student deserves. More so, the remuneration is poor and even that poor remuneration is late to come. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to give a case in point and I hope the Minister will take action. The teachers of Kakamega East, that is, Shinyalu Constituency who supervised and invigilated the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in the year 2009 have not been paid to date. We are expecting that in another one-and-a-half months time, they should go back and mark without being paid for the previous year. Is there any reason you singled out in the entire Republic, the teachers of Kakamega East, in particular Shinyalu Constituency not to be paid? Is it because in the entire Kakamega East, Kakamega Central and Kakamega South where I come from, there is no Minister? Is this a scheme to make us lose our re-election because our teachers will obviously say that we do not push their agenda? Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to conclude by commenting on just one thing about the quality of university education as we now vote for more money to go to HELB. The quality of education at our universities is now in question because in my humble view, there is a lot more emphasis that these days is being put on the capacity of a student to finance his or her education rather than the capacity of that student to be able to sit for examinations and satisfy both the internal and external examiners. It is no wonder that these days, I meet some of my former classmates in “O” Level who did so badly and today they tell me; “I now have a degree or Masters in Business Administration and so on.” What went wrong to the high standards at the universities where students used to be referred or discontinued? We cannot joke with the standards of education in this country if Kenya wants to be a model country in Africa. I say “no” to post-menopausal degrees. Let us allow those classroom spaces for our young people who got C+ and fund them through the HELB, and the old people retire and go and look after goats at home. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, with those remarks, I beg to second."
}