The police in Sameta Sub-county have been commended for their crackdown on illicit brews in the area, as it has reportedly impaired many school students who use it and has led to a decline in their attendance.
Nyanza Region Parents Teachers’ Association Chairman Paul Mainga thanked Sameta Subcounty Police Commander Madam Lucy Mugambi for her efforts and asked other Sub-county police commanders to follow her example.
“If all officers led such a consolidated effort to crack down on illicit alcohol and drugs, our youths who have dropped out of school because of the drug influence will be redeemed,” he said.
Mainga was responding to the recent chang’aa crackdown in the Sameta area, where the police seized 481 litres of the brew at Itumbe market, situated along the Kisii-Ogembo road.
Mrs Mugambi said that her officers seized other illegal objects, including two imitation FN rifles and three toy pistols that are believed to be used to commit crime in the region.
“My officers arrested one suspect who confessed to using school boys and girls to lure his victims, whom he robbed, and he is assisting us with important information that might help us to arrest more suspects,” she said.
She said that the operation is part of the broad National crackdown on all illicit brews, as ordered by the police National Service Department.
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Nyamagwa SDA Mixed Secondary School and Riokindo Girls School Principals Benson Onyoni and Pamellah Nyabuto, respectively, blamed parents for leaving their children to wander in towns unguarded.
The two principals asked parents to guide and counsel their children in addition to monitoring them for readily corrected behaviour, rather than leaving the whole matter of discipline to teachers.
“Most of these youths get a stray when they are going back to school as they are given school fees to carry, which tempt them to buy beer and end up victims of bad company,” she said.
She asked parents to pay school fees through the bank or via mobile phones to prevent their children from handling money, which can be tempting.
On his part, Onyoni asked parents who fail to get school fees for their sons and daughters when they are sent home not to keep them there, but instead to accompany and return them to school with pledges of paying school fees later, instead of exposing them to external dangers that are entailed in their idleness.
He asked the government to issue severe punishment to any adults who mislead the youth into criminal activities.
“Apart from being teachers, we are also parents who feel this bitter weight of losing the youth who are the future pillars of this country,” he said.
A survey carried out by Education News among rural schools in Kenya, specifically in Nyamache, Sameta, and Etago sub-counties, revealed that most secondary school students loitered in markets and around bodaboda stages while playing cards.
At some point in the Etago market, one mother lamented a Form Four girl from one of the Girls’ schools in Nyamache Subcounty who visits the town every Friday and wondered how she frequently gets permission to leave the boarding school.
“This girl is seen here daily carrying a big bag as if she is a merchant,” she whispered.
Kenyanya Sub County Peace Committee Coordinator, Nathan Otara, appealed to CS for Education, Julius Ogamba, to find ways of retaining students who are sent away from school to go home for school fees. In the process, they are exposed to the danger of social influence.
“I appeal to the CS to devise a comprehensive policy on school fees payment and retention of students at school to cushion them from danger,” he said.
The parents’ outcry comes at a time when there is nationwide uproar over kidnapping and mysterious physical disappearance and death of students from both Secondary schools and Universities.
By Enock Okong’o
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