Nandi County Senator Stephen Arap Sang has asked Governor Cleophas Lagat to release all the outstanding bursaries amounting to Kshs 180 million that the county government failed to disburse in the last three financial years.
Senator Sang has accused Governor Lagat of playing politics with funds meant to assist bright needy and deserving children. He said Lagat was holding bursary funds so as to release them during the election period in order to use it as a bait to hoodwink parents of needy children.
The Senator's remarks comes amid of new developments which saw parents in Lelwak sub-location of Chepkunyuk Ward reject Kshs 51, 000 bursary allocation to them by the Nandi County government which they termed as a pittance.
A meeting called that had been convened by the county government to award the bursary funds, at Tigityo Primary School, turned chaotic and ended in disarray after parents rejected the meager allocation and flushed out two representatives of the county bursary education fund asking them to return back the funds to Governor Lagat.
The Senator who was reacting to the bursary disbursement fiasco said it was unfortunate that Governor Lagat had promised residents to release the bursary funds which have accumulated for three months only to announce only to release Kshs 60 million.
"When does he expect to release the balance of Kshs 120 million considering that the country is gearing towards an electioneering period? He should release the accumulated amount to enable needy children to pay their accrued fee balances and allow them to focus on their studies," said Sang.
Senator Sang further pointed out that there was a need to adopt the National Government-Constituency Development Fund(NG-CDF) model in the disbursement of bursary funds to ensure fairness and transparency in the exercise.
Under the current model being rolled out by the county government, the bursary amount awarded to each sub location will sponsor only two students in secondary school at the rate of Kshs 8,000 each while the rest of the funds can only cater for the tuition of one student in a youth polytechnic and one enrolled in a university at the rate of Kshs 15,000 and Kshs 20,000 respectively.
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