Disco matanga ban ends teenage pregnancies

Coast Regional Coordinator John Elungata confirmed that only two pupils out of the over 109,000 pupils were forced to sit for the exams at their maternity wards [Courtesy]

The Government has lauded the crackdown on the disco matangas (night vigil festivities) saying it had yielded fruits in the moral behaviour of youths in the Coast region.  The region recorded almost zero cases of teenage pregnancies amongst the candidates who sat the 2021 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations that recently concluded.

Coast Regional Coordinator John Elungata confirmed that only two pupils out of the over 109,000 pupils were forced to sit for the exams at their maternity wards, one pupil in Mombasa County and one pupil in Kilifi County, unlike in the other years when teenage pregnancy was rampant.

The Government has lauded the crackdown on the disco matangas (night vigil festivities) saying it had yielded fruits in the moral behaviour of youths in the Coast region [Courtesy]

Mr Elungata said pupils and teenagers were getting lost in the disco matangas, leading to early pregnancies, school dropouts and dwindling education standards. He asked parents and teachers to support the crackdown for a better society.

Mr Elungata said the examination went on smoothly without any hitches saying the government wishes to have a situation where exams can be picked and escorted in the respective centers without necessarily having escorts if the level of honesty being witnessed is to prevail.

“We would have developed the honesty like in other countries where if you drop your wallet with whatever it contains whoever collects it brings it to you or takes it to the nearest police station. It is not interesting to see yourselves, honest individuals being escorted. We would rather wait for you in school,” Elungata told the centre managers and invigilators.

Mr Elungata told the managers that they must develop a trajectory that must be followed through so that it will get to a point where people trust them, just like the way people trust them with the kids and trust them with the exams too.

“The world knows that if you sit for an exam in Kenya, it is an exam that has been well managed, and an exam full of integrity with no cheating and that’s where we want to get,” Elungata said.