By Amoto Ndiewo
Many adults in Mororo, Tana North sub county are unemployed and their children don’t go to school despite the existence of a primary school nearby.
Sala ward MCA aspirant Mohamed Ali Mkombozi alias Mohamkombozi noted that there is need for a multispectral approach to combat the low school enrolment.
He explained that most parents are too busy looking for work instead of guiding their children and that it’s understandable that most people are living on a shoe string budget because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the drought driven hard economic times.
The aspirant said that catering for families has become a huge hurdle for parents due to lack of employment.
‘I’ve been supporting some children by buying them school uniforms and paying levies but unfortunately many have dropped out of school,’ said Ali.
He noted that most children are quite malleable in lower primary grades but that once they reach puberty, ‘’it becomes a story of rigidity.
Ali attributes this hardening stance to growing social demands and pubescence peer pressure from children in the child labour industry.
‘These children admire their age mates who earn money from child labour and are free as birds,’ he said, adding that the children know they aren’t on the right track but lack guidance.
Ali, who holds a Business Administration degree from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, blames unemployment as the core of low school enrolment in Mororo, Maramtu and Bakuyu areas in Sala ward.
‘With vast resources abounding in River Tana , fertile land around and immense human capital to do business, there is need for stakeholders to beget a ward level kitty to economically uplift the lowly,’’ he pleaded.
He added that with a stronger economic footing and discipline, they will be comfortably educate their children.
He observed that economically better off families use psychological discipline techniques which led to internalized guilt and higher achievement motivation in their children and that the method is better than physical disciplining methods which demoralize children.
‘As modes of economic production became more complex, increasing levels of education are required for social mobility thus taking care of the children shouldn’t became a burden. Unless that is observed, children who don’t go to school face a prospect of a long life suffering, ’said Mohamkombozi who complained of few primary schools in Sala ward.
Atata primary school headmistress Halima Mohamed said the enrolment at the institution dropped after the Covid-19 break from 684 to 494: 229 boys and 265 girls. She adds that she couldn’t trace the students who dropped out of school.
She admitted that many of the school going children of either sex play different roles instead of going to school.
‘Many boys engage in child- labour. The girls on the other hand get pregnant and married,’ said Halima.
