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| Gatanga MP Eng. Joseph Nduati Ngugi (extreme left) flags off the 2018 the 16 "Wings To Fly" beneficiaries from Thika East, Thika West, Gatundu North and Gatanga sub-counties. |
Gatanga MP Eng. Joseph Nduati Ngugi has appealed to
Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed not to rush the implementation of
the new 2-6-3-3-3 curriculum arguing that schools lacked the necessary
infrastructure to accommodate the system now.
Speaking in Thika Town on Monday while flagging off 16
beneficiaries of Equity Bank’s 2018 “Wings To Fly” Programme, Eng. Nduati noted
that most public schools across the country lacked basic infrastructure to accommodate
any new structure in education thus there was need to invest on the same before
the ministry rolled out the new system.
“I want to point out that 8-4-4 is not a bad system after
all having seen it churn out so many successful professionals over the years. We
should not, as a country play politics with the education of our children and
keep changing our education system now and then,” said Eng. Nduati.
The Gatanga legislator hailed the manner in which the Thika Community Scholarship
Selection Board conducted the exercise saying that only the most deserving
cases were selected. However, the MP admitted that only a small percentage of
deserving cases benefited thus there was need for other stakeholders to come
on board in order to assist all those who were left out due to various reasons.
“Those selected are very few compared to the big number of
the needy children we have in the society. As Gatanga, we are going to use Equity’s
Wings To Fly list to assimilate all those we can with our Ksh. 25 million CDF kitty,”
he said.
He challenged parents to take full advantage of empowerment
programmes being rolled out by the government so as to improve their economic
status and be able to educate their children without fully depending on external
assistance.
Thika
Branch Equity Senior Business Growth &
Development Manager Mr. Samuel Karanu admitted that the level
of poverty among families was quite high in the region with so many deserving
cases being locked out of their selection.
He
urged the parents and guardians of the beneficiaries not to abdicate their
duties as parents especially now that their children had received full
scholarships.
“As
parents, you should not abscond your parenting responsibilities now that Equity
Bank has taken up the role of educating your children. This is a shared
responsibility between both of us so as to ensure that these
children do not get lost along the way,” he said.
He
advised the beneficiaries not to let anyone kill their dreams, appealing to
them to use the scholarship opportunity to work hard in school and uplift the
economic standards of their households.
Thika
Town MP Eng. Patrick Wainaina, who was away on other official duties, was
represented by his CDF Chairman Mr. Huruko Njau, who reiterated their
commitment to assisting all the needy students with bursaries and in any other
form of assistance.
171
students from Thika East, West, Gatundu North and Gatanga sub-counties applied
for the scholarship this year with just 110 getting shortlisted for the final
selection.
To
qualify for Wings To Fly scholarship, one had to have attained a minimum of 350
marks in this year’s KCPE and must have been come from a genuinely poor family background.
Since
its inception, Thika region has so far benefitted 240 students, some of who
have successfully joined the labour market, both locally and abroad.
“We had no alternative but to do our wedding here. The
doctors told me that my wife was not in a position to go home for the wedding
and so I requested them to permit us go ahead with our plans from within the
compound,” explained an ecstatic Mungai.
