'No school should send students home for lack of fees' President Uhuru orders

While speaking in Garissa County, Uhuru instructed school management boards and head teachers of public schools in arid and semi-arid counties to cease sending students home for school fees.

The President said the government was committed in ensuring learning is not affected by the drought situation.

“As national government, we are taking this issue to parliament requesting them to realign the budget and allocate funds to purchase food for Kenyans affected by drought,”  Uhuru said as qouted by a local daily.

As part of urgent measures the government has taken to cushion affected schools from hunger, food for fees program has been introduced where the Government will supply food items to schools, which will in turn deduct the cost of the food from the fees they charge students.

According to recent government statistics, about 23 counties have been affected so far by the ongoing drought and famine.

Last week, the government through the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) also launched a programme to buy livestock from pastoralist communities in North Eastern.

The programme will see the government buy weak livestock from herders in drought-stricken areas and then slaughter the animals for the locals to consume as well also supplied it to public schools.

President Kenyatta announced that the Government is reviewing its budget to allocate more funds for the purchase of food to assist those affected by drought.

“We are reviewing the budget to step up distribution of relief food in the affected counties,” President Kenyatta said.

The cabinet secretary for Agriculture, Willy Bett last week announced the government had 21million bags of maize in its reserve, enough to last the country for five months until june.

However as part of its preparations in case the long rains normally expected to occur from April fails to materialize his ministry was currently searching for available markets to import maize from.