By Fredrick Odiero
The school feeding programme by the County government of Kisumu has been scaled up to ensure 100 percent retention of children in school.
Kisumu Governor, Prof. Anyang Nyong’o said in the financial year 2020/2021, the County government distributed food to all the ECDE centres and fed 50,000 learners.
He added that Kisumu County has 673 Early Childhood Development Education-ECDE centres of which 660 are anchored in primary schools while 13 are stand-alone public ECDE centres.
The Governor said the public ECDE centres have a total enrolment of 51,408 children in the Seven Sub-counties.
“Out of these, 25,266 are girls and 26,142 are boys. Nyakach sub-county has the highest number of ECDE children at 11,369 while Kisumu Central has the least at 3,207.” He said.
He pointed out that in the last financial year, 2020/2021 the Pre-Primary Programme focused on delivering his mandate through Access to Free, quality, and safe ECDE education to pre-primary children in Kisumu County.
Nyong’o added that in the financial year 2020/2021, his administration distributed Shs 205,000,000 worth of bursaries and scholarships to needy students in high schools and Colleges.
He said Scholarship and bursaries beneficiaries in the year were 1,260 and 36,259 respectively spread across all the 35 civic wards.
“The beneficiaries increased from 33,403 in 2019/2020 to 36,259 in 2020/2021 which translates to a 9% growth.” He said.
Nyong’o said that was why his administration must do more to ensure that investments in those two core areas deliver the desired results.
“We have resolved as a government to start giving bursaries to those seeking to study Marine studies at the recently built Marine school.” He said.
Nyong’o said over the four years of his administration, they have kept pace with the aspiration of strengthening this devolved mandate by building infrastructure at the two levels and equipping them in order to produce market ready professional and strong minds that can graduate to the next level of education.
“I want to recognize the efforts of Mama County for championing the strengthening of inclusive ECDEs where parents can continue to play a crucial role in the growth of the young ones even during school hours.” He added.
The Governor said that in as much as higher levels of education are the preserve of the National Government, they are alive to the fact that the students in those schools are still our responsibility as local governments.
He said it was for that reason that they have continued to grow bursary and scholarship portfolios to broaden the numbers of beneficiaries.
“Having increased the number of beneficiaries through enhanced budgetary allocations, we have gone ahead to ensure that each beneficiary receives allocations that are commensurate with their schooling needs.” He indicated.
