By Makoma Musyoka
Machakos county gubernatorial aspirant Johnstone Muthama has promised to come up with a motivational kitty to reward high school students in order to encourage them to work hard and uplift the education standards in the area.
Muthama said the education standards in the area had gone down yet there wasn’t any initiative by any politician to encourage good academic performance.
“It’s unfortunate that the education standards in the county are low yet we have teachers who have produced the best results nationally,” he sadly pointed out.
The aspirant revealed that if he wins the August 9th general elections, he will purchase a new bus, construct a new library as well as allocate Ksh 100,000 to the best school.
“Such initiatives will make learning more interesting and bring competition among students and schools,” he confidently said.
He was speaking in his home in Tala town after teachers from Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) and Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) endorsed his gubernatorial bid.
Mr. Muthama and his running mate Prof Faith Muli presented their proposals for streamlining the education sector in Machakos county starting with the ECDE sector.
His proposals include hiring two ECDE teachers per center, introducing school feeding programmes in the ECDE centres and disbursing bursaries to needy students in time.
“I want to relieve parents from the burden of paying teachers under the PTA arrangement,” he committed.
He expressed his commitment to work with the various teachers’ unions to improve the education standards in the country since I have the best interest of the county at heart, especially in matters education.
“Education is a very delicate sector. When neglected, everything else will collapse due to production of unqualified personnel,” he said.
The teachers promised to support Muthama’s gubernatorial campaigns to ensure he wins in the August general election.
