CS Fred Matiang’i: All schools to get piped water

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i with pupils of St Agnes Baricho Academy during the 88th graduation ceremony of Kamwenja Teachers College in Nyeri County on Friday.  [PHOTO: KIBATA KIHU/STANDARD/STANDARD]

The Education ministry is working on a programme that will see all public schools nationwide connected with piped water in two years’ time.

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i said consultation was ongoing with his Water counterpart Eugene Wamalwa on how the ambitious project would be implemented.

The CS said President Uhuru Kenyatta had directed the two ministries to explore how the programme would be carried out.

“We expect to apply the same model like the one used to connect power to all public schools, which are getting electricity from the national grid, in a bid to achieve this,” said Dr Matiang’i.

Speaking during the graduation ceremony of over 400 teachers at Kamwenja Teachers College in Nyeri, the CS said currently, the two were engaged in mapping out key water sources like boreholes and other places as they came up with strategies on how to implement the ‘Water For Schools’ programme.

The CS noted students, especially those in semi-arid areas, are spending a lot of time looking for water as opposed to studying.

 Hire Teachers

“We want to ensure provision and consumption of clean water and deal with water borne diseases,” said Matiang’i.

He further noted the Government was in the process of hiring 5,000 new teachers - school boards of management intend to hire between 1,500 to 2,000 more - to ease acute shortage of teachers in public schools.

While appearing before the Senate committee on Education last week, the CS confirmed that his ministry would only hire the 5,000 teachers factored into the budget.

The ministry, he noted, had pumped a lot of resources into education, adding that Sh16 billion has in the last three years been set aside, with Sh9 billion going to secondary schools alone.

This, he said, was spent on acquiring learning materials in order to achieve the one-book-one-student ratio.

“We want to come up with a new system of distributing learning materials. It is not good for more than four students to be sharing one book,” the CS added.

He said an additional Sh16 billion has been spent building technical training institutions in 25 counties and upgrading of eight such colleges to polytechnics that will offer degree and other senior course.

“The Government has further disbursed Sh3.4 billion to cater for candidates sitting examinations in primary and secondary,” he added.

He said the Government was exploring ways of upgrading Kamwenja Teachers College to start offering diploma courses in Education.