Sixty three primary school heads in Migori County risk being surcharged over the loss of digital learning devices in their institutions.
The disappearance of over 200 digital learning and teaching devices has triggered a big debate within the local development monitoring committee prompting call on the Teachers Service Commssion to urgently take action against the affected heads.
According to a letter sent by the Migori county ICT/DLP in-charge Mr. Alex Odhiambo to the county development implementation coordination committee (CDICC) chairman Mr. Joseph Rotich, the loss of the gadgets has compromised the smooth implementation of the programme in the affected institutions and the responsible heads must be compelled to account for the loss.
Consequently, during a meeting of the county development monitoring committee Monday, Rotich directed the County Director Teachers Service Commission to move with speed and compel the affected teachers to return the devices or face the rightful consequences
Mr. Rotich who is the local county commissioner also asked the police to speed up investigations about the reported thefts of the devices to bring the culprits to book.
Information availed to KNA by the ICT/DLP office in Migori town indicated that the devices either got lost after unknown people broke into the schools’ strong rooms or head teachers of the affected schools failed to hand them over to the new heads after being transferred to other schools or went on retirement.
Some of the institutions where such theft of the devices occurred have not even reported their loss to police, raising public suspicions over a conspiracy between the heads and faceless people to fleece schools of the DLP devices.
To date, the government has supplied 16,020 learning and 762 teaching devices and 435 projectors to 447 schools out of the 625 primary schools in the region.
A consignment of the devices for 156 schools is expected to be received by the end of this month, according to Mr. Odhiambo.
“We are only concerned about the increasing thefts of the devices, otherwise the programme is a success story in this region,” said the officer from his Migori office.
The County has effectively addressed the problem of power supply to schools that hitherto threatened to hold back the use of the devices in local schools.
Region’s Kenya Power manager Mr. Moses Rotich said they have been able connect 618 primary schools to the national grid and promised to connect the remaining 7 schools within the next few months.
“We are also working to ensure that there is constant flow of power to the schools so that the use of the gadgets is not disrupted at all,” said Mr. Rotich.
By George Agimba
