Insufficient funds hurting school programmes, principal says

Insufficient funds hurting school programmes, Speaking to the media on Monday during a reproductive health talk to students, Wanjala speaks Toroso SA Secondary School principal, Shadrack Wanjala, has said that many students in his school in Mt. Elgon region are at home due to lack of sufficient funds to pay school fees.

Speaking to the media on Monday during a reproductive health talk to students, Wanjala stated that the school administration do not have enough money to run programmes, attributing it to high poverty index in the region and removal of some students from the county scholarship kitty list of beneficiaries.

“I am worried about our future performance in the national examinations because at least a good number of students are staying at home due to school fees,” he noted.

Wanjala Explains facing hunger

Wanjala added that schools are also facing hunger as the available foodstuffs are not enough to maintain the large population in the schools and that there are no funds to procure more food.

“Keeping around a huge population of students without food, sometimes it is dangerous, I appeal to the area MP Fred Kapondi to move with the speed and help us purchase food,” he said.

Wanjala, however, said that 19 students who were initially on the Bungoma County scholarship were removed by the current administration asking them to consider paying for their fees.

“Before Ken Lusaka took over as the governor, the county under former boss Wycliffe Wangamati was sponsoring 19 students who are now not benefiting, some of them aren’t in the school as we speak,” he said.

The school head noted that his school has a total of 1,500 students’ 50 teachers and 40 support staff.

“Toroso being the largest school in Mt. Elgon, it has attracted a huge enrolment of students,” he added.

Reproductive health in schools

Wanjala urged schools to embrace reproductive health in schools noting that it is crucial to the students adding that his school has a strong guiding and counseling department.

Speaking after the reproductive health talk, Silva Julie, founder of the Silva Shied Organization stated that she mainly launched the talks in Mt. Elgon region schools because the region has in past recorded high number of teenage pregnancies, SGBV and FGM.

“The sole purpose of such talks in our schools is that we want to raise a generation that understands the effects of the three triple threats, our girls in the region are under threat,” she said.

Her counterpart Abdulkarim Taraja of Elgon Center for Education told Education News that the main aim of forming the organization is to promote access to education, mitigate effects of alcoholism and intensifying reproductive education in schools.

By Tony Wafula

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