{"count":1608389,"next":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=150400","previous":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/?format=json&page=150398","results":[{"id":1522182,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522182/?format=json","text_counter":188,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Veronica Maina","speaker_title":"The Temporary Speaker","speaker":null,"content":" Thank you, Sen. Betty. Proceed, Sen. Beatrice Ogola."},{"id":1522183,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522183/?format=json","text_counter":189,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Ogola","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker. From the onset I want to thank Sen. Betty Montet, for moving this Motion. Sen. Betty Montet is the current Chair of the Committee on Education and from the word, go, we know her as a team player, who will steer the Education Committee to the next level. She is an organiser and often when we have some of our arrangements as women Senators, she is our designated organiser. 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":1522184,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522184/?format=json","text_counter":190,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Ogola","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Madam Temporary Speaker, I rise to second the Motion as moved by Sen. Montet. This is a Petition to the Senate regarding the discrimination by Teacher Service Commission (TSC) on the payment of hardships and enhanced house allowance to some teachers in Kilifi and Taita Taveta counties. This discrimination may not only be specific to Taita Taveta and Kilifi counties. A number of teachers in this Republic continue to be discriminated in the issue of hardship wherever they are serving. It is the mandate of the Ministry of Public Service and Human Capital Development to designate hardship areas. Madam Temporary Speaker, in my experience as a teacher and in my day-to-day working with teachers as a leader, I would like to tell you that most teachers, if not over 80 per cent of teachers in this republic go through a lot of hardship. Basically, hardship allowance was meant to compensate for the hardship that teachers go through in their areas of work. Secondly, the hardship allowance is supposed to compensate the teachers due to the isolation and the separation from their families. I am a teacher, and I know that most of the teachers in the country, especially the ones that teach in the rural areas, which is over 80 per cent of the areas of the schools in which our teachers teach, are not able to live with their families. Some of those rural areas do not even have houses that teachers can live in dignity. Most of the time they are isolated from their families. Madam Temporary Speaker, this is a profession where, like all other professions, Kenyans join voluntarily, and from their young age, they start their families away in their areas of work, far away from even their spouses. It comes with a lot of sacrifice, resilience, and patience from these young public servants. So, these are some of the reasons why the teachers are given hardship allowance. The other reason why they are given house allowance is also to compensate them for lack of basic amenities, which are beneficial to most of other public servants. You have seen in the report of the Mediation Committee, that in setting out the categories of the hardship areas, there is specification of municipalities. It is only in those few municipality areas, and specifically the cities, where you would find that the teachers, like all other public servants, have access to certain basic amenities. Madam Temporary Speaker, teachers, wherever they are in those hardship areas, lack basic amenities like infrastructure. In most of the rural areas, teachers go to work on boda boda . It is not to say that boda boda is not a good means of transport, but this is a case where teachers use majorly boda boda in areas where there are even no motorable roads, yet these are teachers who are living far off from the schools. In this country, we still have areas where schools have no access roads. So, this calls for teachers to be given hardship allowance. Some of these schools and places where these teachers live and teach do not even have electricity. Madam Temporary Speaker, it is majorly the teaching profession where public servants work away from modernity. I therefore support the fact that the Ministry of Public Service must relook at the discrimination that has been highlighted in Kilifi and Taita Taveta counties. However, it must not only be limited to Kilifi and Taita Taveta counties. 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":1522185,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522185/?format=json","text_counter":191,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Ogola","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Some of the innate effects of this discrimination is that the teachers finally have reduced morale to work. When teachers who are teaching our children, and looking into the growth of the youth and our children, into becoming hardworking and serious adults in this country have no morale in work, this directly affects the growth of our children, and finally affects the growth of these young people into the adults that we are looking forward to having. Madam Temporary Speaker, another net effect of the discrimination in this hardship allowance is that finally those areas end up with staff shortage. This is because, a number of teachers are not comfortable in those areas, and as a result, they continuously seek transfers. This even leads to high turnover. In the teaching profession, there is need to have harmony in the kind of personnels that attend to children, so that learning can effectively and efficiently take place. For learning to take place, and our children to get knowledge, there should be some consistency and progress of the teachers that teach these young people. Madam Temporary Speaker, another serious net effect of the discrimination of the hardship allowance is that, it has even led to a number of resignation of teachers. Remember, for one to have gone to school to be trained into a teacher, that was an investment by the community and country. So, when they resign, it means we are lacking that kind of knowledge yet Kenyans invested in the training and education of these teachers. Madam Temporary Speaker, another net effect of this discrimination of teachers is that, a number of teachers end up deserting their work stations. A number of teachers have been depressed. I have often dealt with teachers who had hardship allowance in their previous stations, but when they are transferred to other stations and they lose it, they lack even minimum salaries, and can no longer support their livelihoods and those of their families. This must be addressed. Part of the way forward that this can be addressed is that, the Ministry must relook at the categorization of regions into hardship and non- hardship allowance. Madam Temporary Speaker, secondly, the Ministry must look at the existing disparities. In the report, as I second, I also notice that the Ministry of Public Service and Human Capital Development had formed an inter-agency technical committee to look at the issue of the disparities. I noticed that there is a further disparity even in the formation of the Inter-Agency Technical Committee; that, in this Committee, there are representatives from the Ministry of Public Service and Human Capital Development, the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, the Ministry of Education, the National Treasury and Planning, the Judiciary, the Public Service Commission, the Teacher Service Commission, the Salaries and Renumeration Commission, the Commission on Revenue Allocation, the Kenya Bureau of Statistics, and the Council of Governors. I did not see the mouthpiece of teachers, that is the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) and Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET). Madam Temporary Speaker, in this period of inclusivity, the Ministry needed to have a non-inclusive inter-agency committee that would speak for the teachers, even as the other stakeholders dealt with their mandates. 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":1522186,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522186/?format=json","text_counter":192,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Ogola","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"As I end my presentation, I want to Second this Motion but say that we need as a country to relook overly at the welfare of teachers. There would be even no need to single out only specific areas to have hardship allowance. If you are to take my word, teachers everywhere still have hardships, because what they earn is not commensurate with the expectations. Madam Temporary Speaker, all of us look up to teachers as role models. May we as a country look into the welfare of teachers. I would propose that three-quarters of this country must be categorized as hardship for teachers because of the lack of access to schools, and certain basic amenities that I have mentioned, including access, to electricity, including Wi-Fi. There are teachers even whose children cannot modern television networks, and yet we expect these teachers to be comfortable and give the best to our children. I second."},{"id":1522187,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522187/?format=json","text_counter":193,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Veronica Miana","speaker_title":"The Temporary Speaker","speaker":null,"content":" Thank you, Sen. Beatrice Ogola."},{"id":1522188,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522188/?format=json","text_counter":194,"type":"scene","speaker_name":"","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"(Question proposed)"},{"id":1522189,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522189/?format=json","text_counter":195,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Veronica Miana","speaker_title":"The Temporary Speaker","speaker":null,"content":"I will now invite Senators to contribute to this Motion, starting with Sen. Catherine Mumma."},{"id":1522190,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522190/?format=json","text_counter":196,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Mumma","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this report and to congratulate the Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Education and the outgoing Members of the Committee, noting that I am also a Member. This is a very good report which I hope we can adopt and follow up collectively as the plenary of the Senate to ensure it is implemented as envisaged. Madam Temporary Speaker, education is the biggest facilitative tool in this country for equality and equalization. Access to education is a sum total of the school infrastructure in terms of buildings, the teachers and quality of teachers that are given to schools, the books, the quality of laboratories, and the security and safety that the students get. We must admit that 15 years since the passing of the Constitution of Kenya 2010, we are doing badly. We are retrogressing when it comes to the right to access education in this country. Our Constitution is rights-based, obsessed, if I can use that word, even though it sounds negative. It has the principle of equality and non-discrimination in every space. The principles of governance within this country in all spaces include the principles of human rights and non-discrimination, equality, and equity. Madam Temporary Speaker, Chapter 6, which is supposed to be the chapter that guides us, guides everyone to act in a manner that ensures that we bridge the inequality gaps. We even went further in Article 204 of the Constitution to create a fund that has never been operationalized, the Equalization Fund, that was intended to hand-hold regions that we have historically marginalized. 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":1522191,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522191/?format=json","text_counter":197,"type":"speech","speaker_name":"Sen. Mumma","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"This Motion is absolutely important as we discuss the issue of unequal remuneration across the country. The same Constitution that established so many constitutional commissions with powers to do this, I feel they have failed us. Madam Temporary Speaker, we have the TSC, we have the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), we have the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNHRC), we have the National Gender and Equality Commission (NGEC), Commission on Administration of Justice, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC), and the 47 County Public Service Boards, all of them mandated by the Constitution to implement the Constitution and to apply the principle of equity and equality. You would have imagined that by the time we have done 15 years, the SCR and the Public Service Commission would have by now helped us to have a uniform definition of hardship areas. Madam Temporary Speaker, you can see clearly, that we are going to spend more money to do something that commissions have received funds for and salaries for 15 years and they have not helped us to do this. In fact, what they have done has contributed to breaching Article 27 of the Constitution on equality and non-discrimination. I would like to urge this Senate to make this an urgent issue; and summon the Cabinet Secretary for Education, and all those commissions to find out why point X and not point Y qualifies to be a hardship area. All of us in the Senate were recently in Kilifi. You will agree with me, Kilifi is one of the areas that through our own eyes we can define as being marginalized. Madam Temporary Speaker, there are workers, not just teachers, policemen, and even public servants in other areas who would go there and try their best but they end up resigning because of the hardship areas. Hardship allowance is one thing that incentivizes those who are undergoing hardships to hold on as we hopefully get the country to bridge the inequality gaps and bring development in these areas. Clearly, we can see that the tools that we put in the Constitution to assist us in bridging these gaps are not doing their job. They are not interpreting their work as they ought to interpret. It is my view that this level of inequality needs to be looked at because it is at the core of undermining the right to access education for children in Kilifi, and for children in other areas that have not been defined as hardship areas. Madam Temporary Speaker, maybe we should even ask, the Chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Education to find out how many teachers the TSC has deployed per school in some of these areas, comparable to the number of teachers that have been deployed to some areas. When the local authorities were devolved, we found out that some areas had an over-employment of people while other areas were struggling to have people. On the aspect of nursing, for example, we had counties such as Mandera which were struggling to keep enough nurses in their hospitals while others were struggling how to reduce the number of nurses that they had. Madam Temporary Speaker, as a Senate, we must reach a level that we start doing human resource audits to find out how many of these resources are serving county X 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."}]}