By Musyoka Kaleti
Embu county Chiefs and their assistants have been ordered to carry out door to door campaigns to ensure all children go back to school.
While addressing the press after meeting the administrators together with Assistant County Commissioners and Deputy County Commissioners, the County Commissioner Stephen Kihara noted that there were several students especially in Mbeere region who were engaging in miraa businesses, a situation he said was hampering their education.
Kihara instructed the Chiefs to start traversing different markets in the region and whip out all school going children who are plying the business.
”We are directing Chiefs to rein in all the markets within their areas where the young boys are participating in Muguka businesses and weed them out because we want all of them in school once they open,” he said.
The Commissioner urged them to work closely with school heads and the Ministry of Education to ensure compliance by all students.
He warned business owners employing school going children that they will meet the full wrath of the law bearing in mind that no one should employ school going children.
Kihara noted that they had already done mapping of notorious hotspots where the vice is rampant.
”We are going to arrest those children together with their parents because this is a vice that cannot be condoned at all,” he warned.
Mbeere region has an expansive Muguka plantation which many of the residents depend on for their livelihood but it seems students have joined in at the expense of their education.
Some students are said to wake up early in the morning to harvest the product before going to school.
Stakeholders have raised complaints to the county government to establish regulations that will bar school going children from participating in the business.
