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{
    "id": 94398,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/94398/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 233,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
    "speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 190,
        "legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
        "slug": "kilemi-mwiria"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, therefore, I would like to propose, and I hope that this will come with the new Constitution, that appointment of diplomats must be more consultative and more competitive. It should not be left to a few people to decide who becomes an ambassador or deputy ambassador of this country. In this regard, a bigger body like the Public Service Commission (PSC) which does major appointment should be involved. The first criteria must be the quality of the person, for example, in terms of the language. I have been to the foreign diplomatic missions of this country where you find many senior officers who cannot speak the language of the country in which they are representing us. These days, there is international exposure. How qualified are the people who are appointed in terms of their capacity to interact with the rest of the world and to be able to take advantage of the many developments in science and technology? More importantly, we must pay attention to regional distribution. In this country, we always talk about how we must be equitable in terms of how we appoint senior officers in the Government, be they Permanent Secretaries or Ambassadors. It is important to ensure that we represent the face of Kenya in the people we appoint as diplomats in this country. This also relates to other marginalized groups, including women. Although we have hundreds of diplomats, I think of the top diplomats we have in this country, we have less than ten women and yet we are talking about a country that should have representation of our women. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, therefore, I propose that it is important for us, as we are auditing--- As the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, we are now auditing universities to check the percentage of people who come from certain ethnic groups. We want to make sure that they are not more than 30 per cent. We should do the same with diplomatic missions. We should have an audit and ask where do the diplomats come from in Kenya. On the basis of that, we should begin to recruit newer people from areas that are under-represented in the missions. Equity is not just about jobs. It is also about the other opportunities that go with your being a diplomat, for example, education advantages, the exposure, the allowances, the housing and more importantly, the kind of contacts that you can come with for people that are close to you in terms of education, trade and so on. If we do an audit and agree that we need to reflect the face of Kenya, that representation must also be proportionate to numbers. It is not enough to ask how many Luos are diplomats. It is important to ask how many Luos are diplomats as a proportion of the population of this country so that that representation also reflects the populations of the various communities. We also need to be more aggressive in terms of using Kenyans that are already out there. Now that we are talking about dual citizenship, there is nothing to prevent us from identifying qualified Kenyans out there who have the benefit in terms of the culture and language of that country and who have the connections that we need in terms of encouraging more Kenyans to benefit from the opportunities that are available in those countries. Those people are a better resource than going to fish a Mmeru from a certain high school and making him an ambassador when we have people who have more experience and can be more useful."
}