By Andanje Wakhungu
The new Mugai/Shirugu Member of County Assembly of Kakamega Peter Wanami has promised to improve the education standards of his ward by tabling a bill to increase the county’s bursary kitty.
He said the current Ksh.2 million per ward was insufficient to address the high number of learners in the county hence the need to mobilise other MCA’s to pass the bursary bill into law once the assembly operations kick off.
Wanami, an educationist and retired head teacher who was speaking after being announced the winner expressed his joy and assured his ward members that he will push for more educational goodies that will enable and ease learning within the county.
“There is need to invest more in educational matters and it is only through education that we will be able to steer this country to the next level of eradicating illiteracy, poverty and spruce up development.” he said.
The leader who has been on the forefront in propagating for the improvement of education standards by scouting for bursaries within the ward is also a reknowned chairman of various school boards within the county and has been campaigning for the girl child education through campaigning for provision of sanitary towels.
His latest lobbying has seen 10 bright needy students receiving bursaries from the NGO, Kenya Alliance for the Advancement of Children.
The leader has been on record encouraging, assisting and educating parents from his locality on the need to apply for bursary and scholarship programmes for their children by engaging relevant organizations to visit and educate the communities over the same.
“We have been urging parents to be fully involved in educational matters and take such opportunities seriously to enable their children go to school instead of deciding to marry them off or used as unskilled labour when they are sent home for fees. There are so many organizations willing to assist this crop of bright needy children and now that I have been elected to the county assembly, I will push for more donors to chip in and uplift our education standards.” said Wanami.
His wife Jane Wanami, also an educationist, hailed the election of Wanami noting that he was of great value to the education sector not only at the ward level but the entire county at large and promised to work together with him and other stakeholders to overhaul the education standards within.
