President William Samoei Ruto has broken his silence and assured Kenyans that the government will not interfere with the budgetary allocation for free basic education.
Speaking at a church service in Nairobi’s Kariobangi area on Sunday, July 27, the Head of State sought to allay the concerns of Kenyans after the National Treasury’s hint at decimating the budget.
CS John Mbadi told the National Assembly’s Departmental Committee on Education that the current budget cannot sustain the free secondary education programme owing to increased government priorities and bulging enrollments.
The CS insinuated that the burden would be shared with parents as the government frees money to other critical sectors.
His pronouncement sparked a raging debate countrywide, prompting the president to weigh in on the matter.
President Ruto emphatically assured Kenyans that the free primary education budget is intact and will be enhanced further.
The president said learners at both primary and secondary schools are entitled to free basic education and no budgetary constraints will interfere with that program.
“I want to assure Kenyans that free primary education at both primary and secondary levels is a constitutional right for all Kenyans. We have ensured that in the last two years, we have undertaken initiatives to make sure that education is truly universal and accessible. Because the commitment we have is that education is the greatest empowerment that any society or country can give to its young people, and that is why it must be affordable, accessible, and of good quality and relevant,” said the president.
He said his government was committed to improving the education sector by allocating more monies and putting up the necessary infrastructure to facilitate learning.
“We have allocated more money to build new classrooms. In the last two years, we have built 23,000 new classrooms. In Nairobi alone, MPs got KES 1 billion allocation to build new classrooms because we had the challenge of congestion that inconvenienced learners and made learning difficult,” he said.
The president’s assurance followed that of his Deputy, Kithure Kindiki.
Speaking in Bungoma County on Saturday, July 26, Kindiki stated that scrapping the free education budget would be reversing the gains made by Kenya ever since the inception of free primary and secondary education during former president Mwai Kibaki’s tenure.
He observed that former president Uhuru Kenyatta improved the programme, and that the Kenya Kwanza regime would purpose to make it better, not destroy it.
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