NAIROBI, Kenya Jan 28 – National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on senior officials in the Ministry of Education, accusing Principal Secretary Julius Bitok of being out of touch with realities.
Turning his fire on the ministry’s leadership, the Majority Leader accused PS Bitok of operating from Nairobi with little understanding of challenges on the ground.
“Those are the issues. Yes, because yourself and your PS you have the most clueless PS in the Ministry of Education, most clueless. He only sits in Nairobi and has no idea what goes on the ground. Get out of your office in Nairobi,”
“Go to the ground, deal with the problems there. Then challenge this house. Challenge this house then to get the 14 billion shillings for you from the budget, and we’ll deal with the problem once and for all,”Ichungwah stated.
Speaking during a leadership retreat in Naivasha, Ichungwah faulted the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the ministry for failing to rationalise teacher deployment, citing cases where small schools have more teachers than larger neighbouring institutions.
“Why would a school with 100 students have 28 teachers, while the school next door with 600 students has no teachers, yet there is a county director of education in that sub-county?” he posed.
Ichung’wah said MPs have been forced to act as de facto school inspectors due to weak oversight by education officials, a role he said should not fall on legislators.
“You do not have school inspectors who are doing anything on the ground. It is these members of parliament who have become school inspectors, and you should not subject Members of Parliament to become school inspectors,”he emphasized.
On school uniforms and lunch programmes, he described the two as a bedrock of corruption in public schools, claiming parents are subjected to arbitrary charges and forced uniform changes that benefit cartels involving teachers and suppliers.
“You will find one school charging Sh3,000 for lunch, another charging Sh8,000 or Sh9,000 in the same locality, under the same ministry. Why don’t you get the resources from the school feeding program to ensure there is food in the schools and also Gazette the maximum amount that should be charged in a school for the lunch program,” he said.
He also criticised frequent uniform changes, saying pupils are unnecessarily burdened when moving from one grade to another.
“In civilised countries, you just change a tie or a badge that costs five or ten shillings. Here, we are feeding uniform cartels, and that is why it took the President himself to intervene,” he said.
Ichung’wah urged the ministry to use existing school feeding programmes to cushion parents and to move with speed to rationalise teachers and close unviable schools where necessary.
“We must decide whether we want to make politics out of education and make everyone happy, or do the right thing for our children,” he said.
Ichung’wah said debate on education financing had been reduced to political rhetoric, instead of focusing on equitable allocation of resources and accountability within the ministry.
“It is up to the Committee on Education and the budget committee to make sure that you have adequate funds then make sure there is equitable distribution. The Chair education cannot be telling us that if you take that money to ngcdf, we will solve the problem,”
“ I do not need infrastructure money in my constituency, but honorable Soro here, with 78 schools, needs more money than me, so you will give him money that I will not need. That’s why I said you are making a political statement,”he noted.
He argued that equal sharing of funds across constituencies ignores the stark differences in the number of schools and student populations.
“Kikuyu constituency has 38 public secondary schools. Lang’ata has only four. Others have more than 60 schools. To say money should be shared equally is not leadership, that is politics,” he said.
Ichung’wah also dismissed claims that redirecting NG-CDF funds could solve the ministry’s financial crisis, noting that even if each of the 290 constituencies contributed Sh30 million, the total would be about Sh8.7 billion far below the ministry’s reported deficit.
“You told us there is a deficit of about Sh42 billion. Even if you took all the NG-CDF money, would it solve the problem? The answer is no,” he said.
