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Kenya's president signs 8 bills into law, 18 days to election

Kenya's president signs 8 bills into law, 18 days to election

Kenya

Kenya’s President and candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, Uhuru Kenyatta, on Friday signed eight bills into law, only 18 days to the August 8 polls.

Signed into law 8 Bills at State House. Bills included The Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2017, The Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Bill 2014. pic.twitter.com/zv0Inxbt3M

— Uhuru Kenyatta (@UKenyatta) July 21, 2017

The bills include the Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Bill 2014, Occupational Therapists (Training, Registration and Licensing) Bill 2016, Kenya Trade Remedies Bill 2017, Nairobi International Financial Centre Bill 2017, President’s Award Bill 2017 and the Companies Amendment Bill 2017.

He also signed the Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2017 and the Kenya National Examinations Council (Amendment) Bill 2016 into law.

The Traffic (Amendment) Act 2017 provides that a person or institution shall not designate or use a vehicle for transporting children to and from school or non-school related activity unless it meets the prescribed standards.

This seeks to promote road safety near schools and child safety in school buses as the vehicles are now supposed to be fitted with seat belts, and vehicles approaching schools must not exceed the speed limit of 50km per hour.

School buses are also barred from operating at night and are to be painted yellow, local media Daily Nation explained.

Contravention of this new law attracts a fine, two-month sentence or both.

Kenya National Examinations Council (Amendment) Act 2016 also follows the government’s announcement of a 100 per cent transition primary school students into secondary school.

A total of 151,341 candidates, who sat last year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination, did not join Form One, Daily Nation reported.

With the new law in place, a total of 1,003,556 pupils are expected to be promoted from primary to secondary schools next year, which is an improvement from last year’s 790,680 out of 942,021 candidates.

In preparation for the large number, the government has announced the construction of 2,000 classrooms in 2,576 secondary schools at a cost of Sh6 billion ($57,803,460).

Kenyans go to the polls on August 8 to vote for a new president. Eight candidates are contesting in the tensed election that has two favourites – President Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Party and Raila Odinga of the National Super Alliance (NASA).

Both have pledged to make primary and secondary education free if voted into power.

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