By Andanje Wakhungu
The county government of Kakamega has announced it will support education programmes in the county. County chief Fernandes Barasa said while addressing teachers during the Kenya National Union of Teachers KNUT Kakamega north sub-county Special General Meeting at Friends church Malava. He said that his government has increased the ward bursary kitty from Ksh. 2 million to Ksh. 4 million to enable more vulnerable children to access education.
He praised the teachers for the good work they were doing adding that they were the opinion shapers of the communities. “My government through its efforts to embrace education has put on board several educationists as ministers and chief officers running various positions in his government”.
Barasa called on the teachers’ service commission to heed teachers’ demands by scrapping delocalization and ensuring that teachers return to their homes to work. We are calling upon the TSC to fully ensure that all those delocalized teachers are redeployed to their home areas as it has been approved by the government.
He also urged the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) to respect the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) signed between the teachers and their union as one way of streamlining the teaching fraternity for the better.
As the chairman of the financial committee within the 47 counties, I will work closely with our national counterpart in the same docket to ensure that our teachers from primary to vocational colleges have the needed infrastructure to support learning through the employment of teachers.
He further pointed out the need to equip primary schools by setting up enough classrooms to absorb Junior secondary school learners who have now been fully placed in the primary section. On performance, he asked the teachers and relevant stakeholders to pull up their socks and improve the mean score after the sub-county recorded poor results in the past years.
Kakamega County has been the academic giant, we and the entire western region need to improve on our mean scores then we shall be able to be ranked even higher.
The governor announced that advance plans were underway to elevate the sub-county into a municipality by December with the milk plant also being opened at the same time which will see the economic status of the town grow quickly.
The sub-county Knut executive secretary Shadrack Tovoko said COVID-19 had adversely affected and slowed down the union’s operations. The AGM saw Dennis Shitanda being elected as the new assistant treasurer replacing retired chef principal Peter Masungo.
