Education CS George Magoha was on Thursday, May 7, forced to ask the chairman of the National Assembly's Education Committee for protection from the members following a barrage of questions that he felt were unfair to him.
Appearing before the National Assembly Select Committee on Education and Research on Thursday, May 5, Magoha countered the committee's decision to have him address issues that he claimed he had already addressed before.
"Chairman I am not disputing you, but you have to advise me because the reactions to what I am reading now are already public. When I'm trying to explain then they are saying that I should restrict myself to the bigger house. Is that fair?
"What I am reading here has already been presented and the information and the reactions by the members of the House are known by everybody, yet you want me to pretend that this is the first time we are dealing with this?" he posed.
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The chair of the committee Julius Melly directed Magoha to answer the questions posed by the house instead of reading from the report he had, as his views had clearly been made public.
"CS I also want to give guidance that for purposes of smooth running of the discussion, we shall give you time to give a final brief, but as of now, just answer questions that the members asked then you can give a parting brief later on.
"What you need to do is just to work onto those particular questions and then we will make progress on the issues raised in an honorable manner," the Tinderet MP stated.
Magoha further called out the MPs for forcing him to give the exact dates during which schools were bound to reopen, a matter that he reiterated he could not say with certainty.
"When you, honorable members, are pinning me down to give specific dates and figures, can you allow me to say you are not being fair to me?
"I do not know whether the cases we shall release today are going to be 100 or 20 or 300. When the government is being cautious, it is not because we are flip-flopping," he stated.
He further informed the committee that despite the uproar over his take on school reopening, he stood by the conviction that everything would be shelved until the pandemic was controlled.
"Irrespective of what we are saying and doing, the pandemic must be controlled first then everything else can follow," Magoha stated with finality.
Watch the video below:
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