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{
"id": 1563862,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563862/?format=api",
"text_counter": 270,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Veronica Maina",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "have debated this Motion are very passionate about the decision that may be arrived at at the end. I am confident that many of the Senators who have spoken on this issue have received their education through public institutions. The majority of them, like myself, come from the village, with the exception of perhaps a few, such as Karungo-Thangwa. I am not sure whether he comes from the village or from the suburban areas of Kiambu Town. Many of us are here today courtesy of the education we received, which was provided by the Ministry of Education through public institutions. I am a proud product of public institutions, from nursery, primary and secondary school, to the university. That means, during my years of growing up, if I had not had a government that was responsive to children's right to education, I may not have been here today. That is why I speak on this issue with deep compassion for the young children and learners I meet every day in Murang’a County or in many other counties across Kenya I examine the funds that have been disbursed to various offices, including the Office of the Member of the National Assembly, the Office of the Governor and the Office of the Presidency, all of which have distributed bursaries into different pockets. When we call on the Controller of Budget to account for how much has been disbursed to the Ministry, we are unable to obtain a clear figure. The funds are scattered here, there and everywhere. We must now find a way to consolidate these funds, so that we can work with a policy that moves us towards free education. This sentiment has already been echoed by Senators who have spoken before me. However, I feel it is important to weigh in on this idea. It is important that every child in Kenya should wake up and not have to return home in search of school fees. I personally had to go back home to look for school fees, except for the first term in secondary school and the last term. I know how painful it is to lose an entire week as a bright student simply because you are unable to stay in school and complete your work. I stood up to say that it makes a lot of operational sense to pool that money and send it directly to the schools, so that we cut on the time that parents have to go to make applications, queuing in thousands outside an office, only to be given Kshs2,000 or Kshs3,000 out of what they need in a school fees invoice that could be asking for Kshs40,000 of Kshs50,000. If there is something the Government can do that will become a signature of the current regime, it should be offering genuine free education at both primary and secondary school levels. Sen. Thang’wa, this is a good Motion because the initiative is good. I know reason will prevail because it is not about politics of the day. We are looking at how to operationalise a Fund in an effective way, so that the best interests of a child are served as per Article 53 of the Constitution and the Children Act which details the rights of every child. One of the rights of every child carried from Articles 43 and 53 of the Constitution are social and economic rights, which by extension could mean education is part of that because it enables a child to have economic and social rights. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1563863,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563863/?format=api",
"text_counter": 271,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Veronica Maina",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, looking at legislation around the best interest of a child weighed against politics of the day, as a House, let us accept to have the best interest of a child. We should put the funds in a pool and send them to the schools. Let every child in Kenya wake up every morning and go to school without worrying whether their fees has been paid or not. They should not worry whether they come from Turkana, Murang’a, Mombasa or Mandera. Let them walk to the schools with infrastructure that gives them an equalization measure across the whole country."
},
{
"id": 1563864,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563864/?format=api",
"text_counter": 272,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Mumma",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Proceed, Sen. Mandago."
},
{
"id": 1563865,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563865/?format=api",
"text_counter": 273,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Mandago",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13577,
"legal_name": "Kiplagat Jackson Mandago",
"slug": "kiplagat-jackson-mandago"
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"content": "Thank you very much, Madam Temporary Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on this Motion. Let me start by saying that I am in support of this Motion proposing to consolidate all the bursaries and make sure that we have free, compulsory and accessible primary and secondary education. This Motion gives us an opportunity as a nation to de-weaponize the use of bursaries for political gain. Political gain is both ways; the electorate and elected leaders. Equally, elected leaders are always under pressure from the electorate who threaten them that if they are not allocated bursary, they will not see the door of Parliament or county assembly or they will not be the governor after the next elections. Therefore, this Motion serves not only the citizens of this country well but also the elected leaders. The responsibility of making sure that all the children of Kenya access education is left with the Executive and Ministry whose sole mandate as per the law and the Constitution is to ensure that all the children of this country access education as their right. We, as a Senate, are not against bursaries. First, we thank policymakers who appeared before us and thought of the good idea of bursary. Bursary has served its purpose for the time it has been in place. We do acknowledge that it has made it possible for some children to advance their education, which they would not have without bursary. However, we want to make the situation better by making sure that there will be no application. There will also be no need to see the chief. One will not need to know their MP, governor, MCA or anybody. A child in Kenya at the right age will just go to school and advance their education. Madam Temporary Speaker, I want to dissuade colleagues who are using political platforms to try and discredit a process that is going to equalize the children of Kenya. Giving this responsibility to the Ministry of Education is actually creating order and making sure that standards are followed in all our schools to make sure that the quality of education improves. Therefore, I fully support this Motion and would like to thank the Senator for Kiambu County, whom I confirm is a villager, who went to a public school, that indeed, this Motion is going to solve the problems that we have had in this country. Madam Temporary Speaker, the Government of Kenya and this country will never lack sufficient resources to be deployed for education. Consolidating the amounts we spend in bursaries in the various dockets, whether in the county governments, Member of Parliament, the Women Representatives, Members of County Assembly, plus the budget that has been going to the Ministry of Education, properly managed and streamlined, is sufficient without looking for additional resources to make education The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1563866,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563866/?format=api",
"text_counter": 274,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Mandago",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13577,
"legal_name": "Kiplagat Jackson Mandago",
"slug": "kiplagat-jackson-mandago"
},
"content": "work. This could not have come at a better time, other than the time when Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) is being rolled out. The CBC as a model of education is also the best thing that happened to this country. We have spent time and many years as a country learning a lot of theory and that is why you find there is very little innovations coming out. There is very little research that can impact industry that has been coming out because of the curriculum that was being implemented. Therefore, this ties in very well with CBC. If we make it equitable and accessible, it will develop this country. I thank you."
},
{
"id": 1563867,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563867/?format=api",
"text_counter": 275,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Mumma",
"speaker_title": "The Temporary Speaker",
"speaker": null,
"content": " The Mover may reply."
},
{
"id": 1563868,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563868/?format=api",
"text_counter": 276,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Thang’wa",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker, for the opportunity to reply to this Motion. From the onset, I would like to take this opportunity to thank every Senator who contributed to this Motion. To be precise, this Motion has been spoken to by 17 senators, including myself. Out of the 17 senators, only one has opposed it. Madam Temporary Speaker, this Motion is calling for free secondary education. That is what was in the mouth of every Senator who supported this Motion, saying that we should have free education. I call upon President William Ruto, that the majority who have spoken have said that this country is ripe for free secondary education. Just like President Mwai Kibaki, who gave us free and compulsory primary education, President Ruto can now make it his legacy and give us free, compulsory secondary education. Madam Temporary Speaker, it does not make sense to make primary education compulsory and free, then after you educate them, you tell them, pay for your children. If you made it compulsory in primary school, also make it compulsory and free in secondary school. Madam Temporary Speaker, we have come to learn that from the funds that I have calculated here, not once or twice, the country has funds. I therefore, would like to answer Sen. Ledama, who opposed the Motion. I think he opposed the Motion because of semantics. Perhaps he got it wrong somewhere. He opposed it but supported within the context. So, I think it was the issue of audit. When you talk about the Ministry to audit, we are not talking about the auditing that is done by the Auditor-General. We are talking about review, look into and research. It is worth noting that every Ministry has internal auditors. I think they need to do that to tell us where we are at, as a country. In addition, Madam Temporary Speaker, if you read the resolution number two of this Motion, it says “consolidate”. I have to be clear here, because this is one of the issues that has confused the Senator. Here, ‘consolidate’ means integrate, harmonize, streamline, not necessarily putting it in one basket. I would even oppose that myself. I am not calling for bursaries to be put in one basket, then we start dishing out the way we are dishing it out. That is centralization. It is taking it away from the village and bringing it to Nairobi. I cannot support that. The money that you have for bursaries is integrated into the schools, so that education can be free. I want to demonstrate by saying that yesterday, I made the calculations. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1563869,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563869/?format=api",
"text_counter": 277,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Thang’wa",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "I said a Member of Parliament is disbursing an average of Kshs50 million per constituency. With 290 constituencies, that is about Kshs14.5 billion. Women Representatives are giving between Kshs10 million to Kshs15 million per county. That is about Kshs705 million. Governors are giving up to Kshs500 million per county. If you multiply that by 47 countries, that is about Kshs23 billion. If you count what the Ministry of Education is giving as scholarships and bursaries, if you count what the President is giving as bursary, if you count what the corporations like “the Wings to Fly,” are giving, I am telling you the money that is out there is more than Kshs50 billion. That is from the Government without calculating bursaries from the private sector. If we put all these Kshs50 billion, divide that amount by five million students who are in secondary school today, every student will get additional Kshs10,000. Today, they get Kshs22,000, so that will be Kshs32,000. I mean, it is more than the required amount for education here in Kenya. So, the answer lies here, by making education free, by putting all these bursaries, all the capitations and declaring secondary education free of charge. I have done my own research from the Members who have supported me and from the members of the public. Even as we speak today, I have just received a letter on WhatsApp. I am not going to read all of it. It is a letter from the members of Mount Elgon Development Network. They have written a very nice letter that we should look at as the Senate. One of the recommendations they have made is to separate funds for the bursary channelled to schools and allow free and compulsory education. This is from Mount Elgon. I do not even know who they are. I could read one or two names; Janet Chemtai and Linet Chepkemoi, and it is written and signed by Cannon (Rtd) Cherotwei Simotwo. So, this tells you the time is now, and the time is right for us to give this country free secondary education. When I talk about calculating the cost of education, and it was also raised here, we want to know how much it costs or how much one student or one child requires from Form One all the way to Form Four. Once we know how much, we just multiply by the number of students. The moment we multiply, the country will know the amount of money they are going to budget for education. Once they do, we will make education free. The last time the Cabinet Secretary was here, he said they have not calculated. That is why we are now telling them, calculate and report to the House, so that both the National Assembly and this House will be able to harmonize and make sure that secondary education is free. It has been said here that those who get bursary know waheshimiwa. Sen. Mandago has brought another aspect. Even waheshimiwa themselves are sometimes threatened. They are told, “if you do not give me bursary, I will never vote for you”. So, we are helping everybody in this aspect. We are helping the Member of Parliament not to be threatened and we are helping the voter to get free education. I want to give an example. There are two Mama Mboga who pay for education. One mama mboga will spend the whole day at the MP's office, the governor's office or the MCA’s office, while the other Mama Mboga who is tired of standing at the MP's office or the governor's office, goes for a kibarua or goes to just do some handy work somewhere to get some money. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
},
{
"id": 1563870,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563870/?format=api",
"text_counter": 278,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Thang’wa",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "It does not mean that the mama mboga who is paying for that education or able to pay that education is better off than the other mama mboga who is spending all the time at the MP’s or the governor's office looking for money. That tells you that if we were to make education free, everyone would stop going to Members of Parliament and go to work. The Members of Parliament, MCAs, governors and everyone else would be voted not for the Kshs2,000 they gave as bursary, but how much they defended the rights to have basic education, which is the primary and secondary education."
},
{
"id": 1563871,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1563871/?format=api",
"text_counter": 279,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Thang’wa",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, it is also good to quote because Sen. Nyamu said something that was intriguing, that free education is the equalizer, but bursary is the divider. That is something we need to tell everyone who is concerned when it comes to funding education."
}
]
}