By Geoffrey Kimagut
The leadership of Narok East Sub-county has been urged to be at the forefront on advocating for the rights of the girl child that has undermined their education standards in the region for years.
The elites, led by John Saruni and Josephine Koisaba said that all the leaders should be on the vanguard on sensitizing the Maasai community on the need educate the girl child since they are part of the community and understand the retrogressive culture that put girls away from school.
“As leaders, we should come out and inform the community on the importance of girl child education so that they can embrace it passionately,” said Saruni.
Saruni who works at Nairobi City County Government and has been behind the upgrade of slums in the city made the remarks during a ceremony at Olasiti in Suswa ward over the weekend.
The professional condemned the current leadership for not speaking out against the vice that has always pulled the Sub-county behind.
“We should not give up advocating for girls’ education. We should join hands in fighting practices like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), early child Marriages and Teenage pregnancies that see girls drop out of school,” he said.
He asked women professionals in the area to act as role models to the girls by availing themselves to give free career guidance in a bid to motivate them to work hard in schools.
“To help fight against these vices, the region requires a model school that will boost the education standards. If well adapted, it may have a positive impact on performances of the learners because it will be provided with adequate learning resources by the government and the
teachers will embrace child friendly teaching learning methods,”
Saruni has also shown interests in Narok East Parliamentary seat.
Similar sentiments were echoed by Koisaba where she urged the parents to nurture their children in a morally upright manner in order to avoid early pregnancies and reduce the high number of school dropouts in the area.
Koisaba, who has also declared to vie for Narok Women Representative seat, called on Non-governmental institutions to help sponsor girls with sanitary towels so that they can feel comfortable while in school
“Teenagers are very important to any society’s future and are the future of a community, a country, continent and the world at large. We need to approach them with the rightful mind so that we can determine the future of the generation,” she remarked.
The remarks came after a report revealed that a serious number of school girls were impregnated over the past three years.
The report further revealed that in the entire Narok County, over 15, 542 teenage girls became pregnant in the year 2020 when schools were closed due to government’s measures in combating Covid-19 pandemic.
14, 962 teenage girls in the county were impregnated in 2019 and another 15, 287 in 2018.
