In Summary;
- Kakai’s post
- selected Reactions
- Link to the post
Noah Kakai’s post on ?#iKUWEiKUWE Movement Facebook group has today elicited emotional as well as defensive reactions from the current government’s executives as the previous government’s official questions their development record in support of Kakai’s article. The two sets of leaders exchanged with Kakai playing a key role in the tiki-taka engagements that attracted the attention of CECM Agriculture Makanda Mukisu backed by Director Communications Tim Machi while Former Agriculture Chief Officer Mrs. Monica Fedha joined Kakai to lead the critic’s side
The post read;
GOVERNOR WANGAMATI MUST BE PUT TO TASK TO ACCOUNT FOR EXCESS OF 30BILLION SHILLINGS RECEIVED FROM THE NATIONAL TREASURY OVER THE PAST 4 YEARS.
As the Governor’s wounds are exposed and our deep rooted economic problems persist, Bungoma County received Kenya shillings 8,893,650,000 in the financial year 2020/2021, ranking it amongst the top-10 Counties that received the highest equitable share of revenues from the National Treasury.
Governor Wangamati has made basic strides in improving education in Bungoma County, but it’s utterly unacceptable that paying school fees still remains an insurmountable task for our people and as such the Governor’s troubled leadership and re-election cannot be defined by incomplete projects and a 200million shillings scholarship fund, which is merely 2% of the County’s equitable share of annual revenues.
While the scholarship beneficiaries are blindly cheering the embattled Governor as he demonstrates his wastefulness of resources; the larger people of Bungoma should not be hoodwinked into this flattery of imaginations, that the Governor’s scholarships are a sum of money awarded to students solely for academic achievement or athletic prowess; this scholarship fund, like many of the Governor’s initiatives, is shrouded in secrecy and financial controversy and some might have been awarded for flimsy reasons – and might have been sneaked into the fund with a little singing of praises, clapping and the tribalistic nature of the regime of the day.
Governor Wangamati and his team must be reminded that although Kenya is a centrally-planned and devolved economy, there is no correlation between education and opportunities; County and national governments in our economy do not determine the distribution of workers across liberalized industries and as such economic opportunities are based on forces of demand and supply, which his Government has crippled over the last 4years.
Follow link to Kakai’s post to read comments; https://www.facebook.com/groups/172326520314211/permalink/894225904790932/
It’s dishonest for a learned lady, who’s the Governor’s proponent to distort the economic theory of human capital, with a selfish objective of harvesting cheap political points and at the same time discrediting other noble professionals like engineers and Businessmen, who champion innovation and create real wealth; to the extent that Governor Wangamati’s scholarship beneficiaries should be mainly future lawyers and Doctors. There might be some semblance of well wishes in the above sentiments, but majority of this utterances are political flattery that’s designed to poach votes from the gullible masses, because the Governor cannot deliberately scuttle our people’s economic fortunes, condemn them to tokenism and dish out hollow futuristic promissory notes.
Governor Wangamati is indeed living on borrowed time..the silent majority have spoken once again, the minority can now have their usual say!
Some of the notable responses include:
Agriculture CECM, Mr. Makanda Mukisu vs Noah Kakai
Former Agriculture Chief Officer Mrs. Monica Fedha reacts;
Very well said Noah Kakai . Let me add my voice to this discussion, having been a pioneer Chief Officer in Bungoma County. I was privileged to serve as the Chief Officer for Agriculture, Irrigation and Cooperatives,Chief Officer Education, Youth Affairs and Sports, as well as Acting Chief Officer for Livestock and Fisheries.I will tell you for a fact that the current county Government has not done much to improve education Standards in Bungoma County, given the devolved functions of Counties as stipulated in Schedule IV of the CoK. The scholarship and bursary programs are not part of devolved functions, but they are classified under Education Support program, that complements the National Government Initiative under CDF and Presidential Scholarship.The mandate of CG in Education is the ECDE and Vocational Training Centres. This is where the CG should be interrogated and held accountable. With over 60,000 ECDE children, proper planning is required for infrastructure development, human capital, as well education materials, school milk program etc. Kakamega County has a capitation of about ksh. 400 per ECDE child, while Bungoma cannot hardly allocate Ksh. 90.The issue of VTC another story. Resources are available, but the proplem lies in budgeting and priority areas. The County needs a strategic leader with a team of technocrats that are visionary.
Let me stop here for now.
~ Monica Fedha – Former CO Agriculture ~
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When Monicah Salano Fedha says Wangamati hasn’t done much in education, you would think she will qualify her statement beyond sentiment or at least enumerate what they did while in office.Maybe we take this discussion down to verifiable specifics:(1) #ECDE #Classes: Between 2013 and 2017, Lusaka constructed 3 classes per ward. This makes for 135 classes across the County. Wangamati on the other hand has so far built 272 ECEDE Classes from the time he took over. By April 2021, all public primary schools will have an ECDE class/classrooms from the County.(2) #ECDE #TEACHERS: When Governor Wangamati assumed office, he found 2,086 ECDE teachers on payroll but who had gone for 9 months without salary. The Governor did not only pay the arrears, he also improved their terms, making the highest paid ECDE Teachers anywhere in the Country.(3) #ECDE #INSTRUCTIONAL #MATERIAL: Between 2013 and 2017, there was not a single effort to provide instructional material to our ECDE institutions. Between, 2017 and now, Governor Wangamati provided instructional/learning material to ECDEs in all public primary schools.(4) #VTCS: Between 2013 and 2017, Lusaka built no VTC. All he remained with were the old village polytechnics inherited from the National Government.Follow link to Kakai’s post to read comments; https://www.facebook.com/groups/172326520314211/permalink/894225904790932/
Between 2017 and now, Governor Wangamati has completed 4 Centres of Excellence among them Wekelekha, Muteremko, Sosio and Lwandanyi and a Resource Centre in Ndengelwa. He has also shipped in state of the art equipment for the Wekelekha (partly installed and working), Muteremko and Chwele VTCs.Another six Centres of excellence are at different stages of completion. They include Kaptirok, Khasoko, Sinoko, Tongaren, Chwele and Cheptais. Before end of the year, each sub county will have a centre of excellence.(5) #VTC #INSTRUCTORS: Between 2013 and 2017, all our polytechnics had were volunteer staff. Between 2017 to now, Governor Wangamati has recruited 442 instructors in different disciplines.(6) #SCHOLARSHIP Between 2013 and 2017, there was no single scholarship to anybody. Under Governor Wangamati, we have a total of 3,856 students on the Governor’s Scholarship.Now based on these verifiable statistics, where does a person who was part of the sleaze that failed Lusaka draw the moral authority to say “there isn’t much Wangamati has done in Education? If Wangamati’s stated and publicly available record is “nothing much”, how then do we describe Lusaka’s ‘no-record’.Finally, Fedha does not come close by any standards imaginable to the two ladies running the Education Department. You had a chance at the Department and all you are remembered for was salting money meant for school shopping for the poor kids.
~ Tim Machi – Director Communications ~
Follow link to Kakai’s post to read comments; https://www.facebook.com/groups/172326520314211/permalink/894225904790932/
