Kiambu County to Disburse Sh. 180m in Bursaries For Needy Students.

Kiambu County Government will this Fiscal year disburse Ksh.180 million as bursaries to offer support to needy students in both secondary schools and tertiary institutions. This amount will be increased to Ksh. 300 million in the next  financial year.

Speaking exclusively to Thika Town Today on Tuesday, County C.E.C Member for Education, Culture and Social Services Madam Esther W. Ndirangu said that lack of funding had been a major impediment that constrained the provision of education at both secondary and tertiary level in the county. It is against this background that this scheme was established to ensure increased access to education, improve the quality of education and more importantly ensure that children don’t stay out of school due to lack of school fees, she said.

She further added that orphans and students from very poor backgrounds had been given priority to avoid a repeat of cases where needy students were previously left out during allocation of bursaries. She added that the objective of the scheme was to assist students from needy and disadvantaged backgrounds to obtain quality education.

Ksh. 40 million has already been disbursed with a further Ksh. 50 Million to be released to schools next week. She explained that the delay in the release was brought about by some legislative hitch which the County Assembly of Kiambu has already sorted out. The Ksh. 90 million balance will be sent to schools in May this year.

A thousand beneficiaries from each ward have been earmarked to benefit from the fund with 15% of this amount (Ksh. 27 million) going to the orphans and vulnerable children who will get full bursary.

Mrs. Ndirangu said that the county government had introduced some feeding programme to all public Early Childhood Education (ECD) Centres, where the children will be offered some nutritional porridge. The same will be extended to all Special Needs Schools in the county. She added that they had also provided all the ECD Centres with mattresses for the kids.

On the on-going national Government school electrification programme, Mrs. Ndirangu said that her county was happy to note that by Monday this week, over 90% of the public schools in Kiambu had already been connected to the national grid.