"Minister gave us promise he has failed to honour"

By Boniface Ongeri

Master Abdikarim Hussein, a pupil at ICF Primary School in Wajir County is learning, at an early age, not to take leaders for their word.

The boy, 13, says Education Minister Sam Ongeri has not honoured his promise to put up additional classrooms in the school.

"If only the promise made by the Minister to construct classrooms to accommodate us could be fulfilled, I won’t be learning in an enclosure exposed to the merciless sun", he says.

Last August, during a tour of North Eastern Province, the Education minister expressed dismay that pupils would learn in structures that could easily pass for kraals.

A teacher leaves a classroom after a lesson. Behind her are pupils in one of the enclosures that serves as a classroom. [PHOTO: BONIFACE ONGERI/STANDARD]

Lack of enough classrooms and a quadrupling of the pupils’ populations saw the school management put up the structures to ensure learning continued. But exposure to the sun – the structures don’t have roofs – has encouraged truancy with most children preferring to stay at home.

Sorry situation

"I have directed my ministry to put up classrooms to address the sorry situation and by the end of the year (2010) the construction should have commenced", Ongeri had pronounced at the school assembly.

He was accompanied by the Ministry of Education officials and NEP MPs, including Minister for Northern Kenya Development Mohammed Elmi.

On being told that many other schools in the province were operating under similar circumstances, Ongeri had said that was unacceptable.

"I remember we clapped and cheered him for the good news. But we haven’t seen anything", Abdikarim said.

Parents have also expressed concern over the unfulfilled pledge. "If the Minister was playing politics, then he chose the wrong place because he promised children", Hassan Gaiye, a parent, said. And he adds: "There are more children at home who haven’t taken advantage of the free primary education due to the pathetic learning conditions at the school ", he added. Locals revealed that no ministry official has even visited the place.

In the meantime, Abdikarim and hundreds of other pupils have to contend with the scotching Wajir heat as they take their lessons.

"We had resigned to studying under the sun and in the kraal until he came and raised our hopes. Now the hopes have been crushed", he said.

"Why pledge something he wont deliver. Sometime silence is golden. He wasn’t forced to make the promise. He made the pledge on his own volition after witnessing first hand what the children go through to get education", Gaiye said.

But residents say it is not the first time a senior Government official has made a promise and failed to honour it. Residents of North Eastern Province say they no longer take promises by high-ranking Government officers seriously.

"But we are keen on this pledge to be fulfilled because it was made in the presence of children", a parent Hussein Abdi said. The school situated in the heart of Wajir town has kraal like enclosures dotting the compound. The children are always jostling for space with the names.

"When the Government pleads with us to allow our children to go to school and they end up in such a condition, we feel short changed and cheated", Abdi said.

The few existing classes cannot be classified as so as they have no lockable doors and windows. As pupils leave for the day, their place is taken over by livestock. The first task when they return to school following day is usually to clear the mess created by the animals.

But the school’s woes don’t end there. The pupils have often to scramble to use the only three toilets in the school. The school’s head teacher Abdi Rashid says the school management decided it would be better to put up the enclosures to accommodate them as one way of keeping them in school.

Teacher shortage and lack of desks has made the situation at the school even direr.

"Most children sit on the earth floor, under trees or no shade at all," he said.

"We need about 45 toilets to cater for the pupils", the headmaster said. The school has a population of 1628 pupils. Despite the fact the school was the best performing school in the County in 2009 and last year.

Efforts to reach the Minister were fruitless. However, the Ministry’s Assistant Director of Public Communications John Mwandikwa promised to respond but had not done so by the time of going to press.