Political leaders have been urged to support national government’s efforts towards full implementation of the Digital Literacy Programme (DLP) in all public primary schools.
The Vihiga County Commissioner (CC), Mrs. Suzan Waweru made the appeal when she briefed a team of officers from Information Communication Technology (ICT) Authority and Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) in her office.
The team led by Mrs. Lilian Kimetto for ICT Authority and Dennis Odunga was in Vihiga County to monitor implementation progress of the DLP agenda.
Waweru informed the team that a total of 374 public primary schools have been issued with DLP devices out of the scheduled 378 public primary schools in the county.“Only four schools out of the initially scheduled 374 schools have been installed with the digital literacy devices,” She said.
According to official statistics, the government has supplied 21,866 tablets, 748 laptops, 374 projectors, 374 content access point devices and 374 hard discs to Vihiga County.
The CC however, noted the number of public schools in the county had since increased to 397 as a result of creation of new public primary schools.
“Thus, the exact number of schools that require the DLP devices is currently 13,” clarified Waweru.
She urged the national government through the ministry of education to consider increasing funds to enable mitigate some of the challenges affecting full implementation of the digital literacy project.
“The programme requires improved and better budgetary allocation to enable the ministries of ICT and Education address some challenges that are derailing its full implementation,” Waweru told the team.
The county boss identified lack of well-built strong rooms for safeguarding the gadgets as one of the major challenges that has affected implementation of the programme in Vihiga County since it was rolled out in 2016.
She attributed recent burglary and theft incidents, which have occurred in about 18 schools across the county, where the government lost some of DLP devices to the lack of secure storage rooms.
In her detailed report to the team, a total of 74 tablets, 21 laptops, 9 projectors, 5 content access point devices, and 8 hard discs were lost in the night burglary incidents that also saw several school watchmen lose lives.
“All the burglary incidents were reported to the local police department,” stated Waweru, adding only 2 laptops and five malfunctioning tablets have so far been recovered.
The county boss, who was flanked by County Director of Education (CDE), Mrs. Hellen Nyang’au and her TSC counterpart, Mrs. Irene Njogu, observed the Shs.60,000 allocated to each school toward construction of strongrooms was inadequate.
Besides urgent need for better strong rooms, the commissioner cited inability of school management boards to recruit trained security guards who can take good care of school property.
“Due to the problem of funds most schools rely on underpaid elderly persons for manning school property,” pointed out Waweru.
She urged the government to avail adequate funds to enable the schools recruit security services with recognized security companies.
Waweru used the opportunity to rally support from local politicians.
She asked area Members of Parliament (MPs) to support the DLP programme through the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF).
“We are appealing our elected leaders to set aside funds from CDF to enable our schools improve on the DLP devices strong rooms,” urged Waweru.
On her part, CDE Nyang’au emphasised on the need for the government to increase annual capitation on Free Primary Education (FPE) funds so as to enable the primary schools acquire better security services.
Mrs. Njogu encouraged teachers to embrace the DLP programme, reminding them it was part of the country’s Vision 2030 flagship projects.
“Thus, the reason the DLP project has strongly been entrenched in the new Competence Based Curriculum (CBC),” remarked Njogu.
The ICT Authority and KICD team visited St. Francis Hambale and Mukul primay schools where they monitored implementation progress of the DLP in Vihiga County.
By Maurice Aluda
